Not a Christmas Card Ending

    Javier and María and their three children had fled violence in El Salvador, and had ultimately traveled thousands of miles seeking a better life. I first encountered this family a few years ago, when around 10 p.m. the rectory doorbell rang. It was a police officer. He explained to me that he had a family in the lobby of the police station that had nowhere to go.

   I accompanied the police officer to the station where I was introduced to Javier, María, and their three small children. They had literally no where to go. The police officers at the station had been incredibly kind and hospitable, giving this family food and even giving the children crayons and coloring books. My parish had an arrangement with the local St. Vincent de Paul society, to provide temporary housing in a local hotel. And so we were able to arrange for this family to spend a few nights in a hotel while the folks at St. Vincent de Paul went about there difficult task of securing emergency housing and assistance to this poor, refugee family. 

   There was additionally a highly-regarded local attorney who offered to represent Javier & María’s family on a pro bono basis. 

  With so many good-hearted allies—the police, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the local hotel, the attorney, etc.—this story should have had a happy ending. I so much wish I could tell you that this story had a fairy tale ending. But it did not.

   Despite the fact that Javier had witnessed members of his family murdered by gangs In El Salvador; that this family endured unimaginable hardship as they journeyed through Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States; and, despite the fact that it was hard not to make comparisons with the Holy Family itself, fleeing violence in Bethlehem and finding refuge in Egypt, María and Javier’s family tale ultimately ended in incarceration and deportation. 

   I do not know what became of this family. Did they even survive intact? When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) eventually stepped in, did they keep this family intact? Did the separate them as thousands of other families have been ripped asunder? As they dropped this family onto the other side of Mexico-U.S. border, what was going through the minds of hearts of Javier and María? And what kind of treatment awaited them and their children in Mexico? Would they be forced to journey back through unimaginable peril to what they believed to be certain death in El Salvador? 

   I so badly wanted this story to have an ending that looks like the cover of a Christmas card. But not all stories have happy endings. This one didn’t. And there are countless stories of refugees from all over the world whose experience of Christian charity in the United States in recent years has been the very opposite of what Jesus said it ought to be: “...I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

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