Bishop Minerva Carcaño, Desert Southwest Conference, United Methodist Church, closes the Arizona Interfaith Network meeting with a benediction.
Clergy and religious leaders in Arizona call on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform
By Albert C. Jones
America, The Diversity Place
CASA GRANDE, Arizona — Hearing the experience of Miriam Mendiola stirred those who attended an Arizona Interfaith Network meeting on immigration reform at the Property Conference Center in Casa Grande about 50 miles east of Phoenix.
Clergy and religious leaders, 216 in all, came here Friday, January 22, 2010 with the mission of urging Congress to pass immigration reform legislation, hold a news conference and talk strategy in what described Arizona as “‘ground zero’ for our nation’s broken immigration policies.”
Arizona Interfaith Network is an organization made up of four broad-based community organizations in Arizona, working together on issues of justice and the common good that cross lines of race, class, and cultural background.
Among the leaders were Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson; Bishop Minerva Carcaño, Desert Southwest Conference, United Methodist Church; Bishop Kirk Smith, Episcopal Diocese of Arizona; Rabbi Andrew Straus, Temple Emanuel, Tempe; and Dr. Warren Stewart, senior pastor of first Institutional Baptist in Phoenix.
Heavy snowfall days before in Flagstaff, Prescott and Sedona led to closure of I-17, leaving fewer in attendance. Still, the meeting room was graced in silence as Mendiola shared her experience.
“I have been living in the United States for 15 years,” Mendiola, speaking at the podium, said through interpreter Rosie Villegas-Smith. “In October, I was arrested at my workplace for not having a Social Security Number. I was seven months pregnant. I was taken to the county jail without being able to say goodbye to my husband and my three- and eight-year-old children.
“The guards strip searched my naked body in a very humiliating way,” she said. “They put me in a room with over a hundred women. The two months that I spent in jail I was very hungry. They would just give me a bag with little food at eight in the morning and I did not eat again until six o’clock in the evening.
“I cried a lot,” Mendiola said. “I worried that my baby was going hungry and he could be born prematurely. The days that I had hearings, they would take me out very early. In the waiting room, where I stayed, there was no drinking fountain or cups and, if I was thirsty, I had to put my mouth around the faucet in the sink to drink. Sometimes I was returned late to jail and they did not give me dinner.
“On December 20, I was taken to the county hospital because I started having labor pains,” she said. “I was checked and returned again to prison. Upon leaving the hospital, they shackled my hands. The next day I was taken back to the hospital. The guard took pity on me and I was not handcuffed. I had a C-Section and my son was born on December 21.
“I was not allowed to have my son in my arms," Mendiola said.
“Immediately after the C-Section, they took me to the recovery room and I was chained by my left foot and tied to the bed,” Mendiola said. “The chain was very uncomfortable and my foot swelled up. The next day I asked if I could see my son. I was allowed to have him for only 15 minutes.
“The next morning the guards returned for me,” she said. “I left without knowing where my baby was. I was bleeding and they did not give me underwear or sandals. I was taken out of the hospital barefoot, shackled hands and feet. It was a very cold day and they gave me no blanket or a sweater. I had to walk out with the chains on and go up to the sheriff's van.
“Thanks to God and the people who were helping me get out of there. I returned home to my husband and my children. I left the sheriff's custody on Christmas, on December 25.”
Rev. Jan Olav Flaaten, executive director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, followed Mendiola to the rostrum
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I don’t want to live in a country that treats people the way we just heard.”
In a sermon, Bishop Kirk S. Smith, Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, likened the rancor over immigration to Joshua’s battle plan at Jericho.
“Blow the trumpets,” Smith urged listeners. “We must if these walls are going to come down. People will raise a great shout and down will come this wall and great will be the fall.”
Carcaño was supported by Methodist bishops from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver. She said people should call on the 44th President “to enact humane and comprehensive immigration reform — now.”
“It is time to raise a moral voice” said Carcaño. “Arizona is ground zero for our nation’s broken immigration policies. At our borders and in our congregations, schools, workplaces and service programs, we witness the human consequences of an inadequate, outdated system.
"We must respect our neighbors and welcome the sojourner into our community,” she said. “We must love them as we love ourselves. Remember Jesus said, ‘Do for the least of them, you have done for me.’
“The Qur'an tells us that we should ‘do good to . . . those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer that you meet.’ To welcome the stranger is to welcome a child of God.”
Carcaño and Kicanas co-chaired the meeting.
“We witness the inadequacy of our outdated immigration system,” Carcaño said. “As people of faith, we pray for an end to this injustice with the passage of comprehensive immigration reform. We need to address the root cause of global immigration. People often migrate because their countries can’t provide for them.
“We can create alternative solutions to immigration by reducing poverty in developing nations,” she said. “In our country, we can create a process to earn legal status so that people can come out of the shadows. We need to uphold family unity as a priority of the family immigration policy and look to what our future workplace needs will be.
“Trauma, fear and hardship is being caused by the raids,” Carcaño said. “I call on the government to release individuals who pose no threat to the community. We must protect the rights and dignity of people until we bring an end to the notorious policy of the Sheriff of Maricopa County. I call on President Obama and the 111th Congress to not delay any further coming up with a comprehensive immigration reform policy.”
Stewart was among leaders instrumental in getting Martin Luther King Jr. Day observed as a state holiday in Arizona. Arizona voters passed a referendum in 1992, amid threats of a tourist boycott of the state and nearly a decade after President Reagan signed a bill making King Day a national holiday.
Stewart, senior pastor of First Institutional Baptist Church, referenced King in his remarks.
“I’m here because I support what the Arizona Interfaith Network is doing with the call for immigration reform,” he said. “Immigration reform is a common thread in the Civil Rights Movement and the fight for justice.
“If Martin Luther King were still here today, he would be in a meeting like this,” Stewart said. “There has been this disconnect as it relates to immigration reform and the black church. It is a natural link for the African American church to be involved in immigration reform. It is the godly thing to do to be involved.”
Straus, leader of Temple Emanuel in Tempe, linked the plight of immigrants to God reminding Israel to “Remember what I did for you in Egypt?” He said the reminder is repeated 35 times in Hebrew Scriptures.
“The tendency to seek out scapegoats is all too familiar to us,” said Straus. “Will we once again allow fear to govern our actions, or will we seek common ground? I will work on behalf of my community and urge my fellow rabbis to take up the mantle.”
Joe Rubio, a community organizer who works with anti-poverty programs, urged building “constituencies and take the right lessons from the Civil Rights Movement and apply them to immigration reform. He said freedom schools, teaching and training is “what gave a leg up to the movement. There is no better place to do it than here in what we’re facing with immigration.
“We need to be able to explain why we need comprehensive immigration reform and why we need to organize ourselves,” Rubio said. “It won’t happen without accountability. The silent majority are basically disorganized. We need to get organized.”
Strategies should include patience, being deliberate and bipartisan.
“We need a trumpet,” Rubio said. “Seize the narrative. We have got to put a different face on the issue — someone like Miriam Mendiola. The story has to be about the American Dream and how hard people are willing to work to achieve the American Dream. It’s got to be about how hard they are willing to sacrifice to send their kids to school.”
The Arizona Interfaith Network meeting was held less than a week after thousands marched 3 miles on Saturday, January 16 from Phoenix’s Falcon Park to Tent City at the Maricopa County Jail.
Since 1996, local police in the United States have been empowered to enforce immigration law through 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. On the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Web site, it reports more than 274,000 people have been investigated and 31,000 were found to be in the country illegally.
In 2009, the Tucson and Yuma sectors of the U.S. Border Patrol arrested 241,673, down from 371,000 from the previous year, said Mario Escalante, a public information officer for the Tucson Sector. The Yuma Sector has also seen a declining drop in arrests. 7,356 were arrested in 2009, a drop from 138,000 in 2005.
Still, a determining factor in “ground zero” is of the 556,041 apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2009 trying to sneak across the border, more than half arrested were caught along the Arizona border with Mexico.
Miriam Mendiola, left, and interpreter Rosie Villegas-Smith prepare to address the immigration reform meeting of the Arizona Interfaith Network.