The Primate's World Relief and Development Fund: Stories

Deportada/Deportee August 21, 2009

Suzanne Rumsey

“Your visa is not valid”.  With those words, I became a “deportada”, a deportee. In mid-July after visiting PWRDF partners in northern Mexico and Peru, I flew from Lima to Sao Paulo, Brazil with a five-year, multiple entry Brazilian visa in my passport that I had used in 2007 and 2008. When I arrived in Sao Paulo I was told that my visa was not valid and that my entry into the country in 2008 had been illegal. I was taken to a detention area where I was placed in the company of two guards and two Spaniards also awaiting deportation.  Eight hours later I was escorted under guard back to my gate, onto a plane to Santiago, Chile, on to New York, and finally, 36 hours later, I landed in Toronto. I was home, exhausted but safe.

_{Odelia: Photo: Marie Triller}
For ten years, Odelia, a Guatemalan woman, lived and worked legally in the United States.  Her two children are United States citizens. In 2007 she was a week late renewing her work permit and was detained and deported to Guatemala.  She worked there for a year and earned enough money to make her way back to her children in the U.S., this time crossing the border illegally in the Arizona desert She was caught by the U.S. Border Patrol and dumped back across the border in Nogales, Mexico.
When U.S. photo-journalist Marie Triller and West Cosgrove, the director of the El Paso-based border immersion program, Project Puente (Bridge Project) met Odelia in Nogales, she was desperate to make contact with her two young daughters who had been placed in the care of Bakersfield, California Social Services. When a phone number for Social Services was located and handed to her, her mood changed from one of desperation to hope; hope that she might receive word about her daughters.
Odelia was far from home – be it Guatemala or California – exhausted and not safe.

On July 24 several Mexican migrant-serving organizations issued a joint statement condemning their government for its treatment of Central American migrants who attempt to pass through Mexico on their way to the United States:  “Currently, the lack of the state’s capacity to guarantee the security of all those persons found in its national territory has allowed a situation in which migrants suffer systematic kidnapping.  This in turn results in violations of their human rights such as torture, sexual and labour exploitation, trafficking of organs and even assassination.”Women are especially vulnerable. Almost half of women migrants suffer some form of violence, including sexual assault during their journey to the U.S. And if they are fortunate enough to traverse Mexico, the walls being built on the Mexico-U.S. border by the U.S. Border Patrol, are forcing more and more undocumented migrants into the desert where on average 450 to 500 die each year.

Many of those detained by the Border Patrol are jailed for periods of up to several months and then put on planes to be flown back to their country of origin. Fully 300,000 undocumented migrants were in detention in the United States in 2007. Others are simply picked up and dumped back across the border into Mexico as happened to Odelia.    Their “crime”? – simply trying to better their lives and those of their families.

While the numbers of detained and deported undocumented migrants here in Canada pales in comparison to the United States, deportations are on the rise as Canada’s immigration policy has shifted from that of “nation building” to that of filling the ever-changing needs of the market. Each year approximately 18,000 Mexican labourers participate in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program. Many have done so for years without any hope of ever achieving permanent residency.

And so, in the face of incredible odds, more than anything else, more than food and water, Latin American migrants rely on their faith in God. Having tried countless ways to better their lives with no success, the migrants strike out “al norte”, placing all their faith and hope in God.

_{Photo: Marie Triller}

Deportation and Loss
What did I “lose” by being deported from Brazil? I lost five days of meetings with PWRDF partners in Brazil; meetings intended to help PWRDF discern its future relationship with this country and its ecumenical development community beyond funded partnerships. I lost some sleep. But ultimately, as a white, English-speaking, Canadian passport-carrying citizen of “the North”, I lost very little.
What did Odelia lose by being deported from the United States? As a poor, Spanish-speaking, undocumented Guatemalan woman, she lost everything. She was sent away from the place that had become her “home” after ten years of life and work and she was sent away from her family. In fact, she may well have lost the chance to ever see her two daughters again.

There is a high wall that cuts through Nogales dividing the city’s U.S. and Mexican sides. It was built with huge, corrugated iron sheets originally used to create a landing strip for the U.S. Air Force in the first Gulf War.  The U.S. side is graffiti-free, but graffiti, art and crosses remembering those who have paid the ultimate price trying to cross from Mexico into the U.S. cover the Mexican side of the fence. Among the graffiti are these words writ large: “Las paredes vueltas de lado, son puentes.” “Walls turned on their sides, are bridges.”

May we seek ways to build bridges, to welcome the strangers who come to be among us, strangers like Odelia, those who journey by faith in God and those who are “God here among us.”