Rev. Deacon Genevieve Nelson of Virginia, Father Mike Wallens of Alpine, Texas, and the Rev. Leeann Culbreath of Georgia at the “Migration with Dignity” pilgrimage across the American Southwest last month. 

Photo by Sam Karas via The Big Bend Sentinel.

Dividing the world into “people like us” and “others” isn’t new. For millennia, empires and governments have dehumanized combatants so soldiers would kill at ease. Enslaved people were Biblically referenced as less than and millions (if not a billion) have been massacred in war and genocide, incited by words. One of America’s greatest moments was ending unspeakable violence driven by Goebbels' propaganda machine. Yet in 2016, President Donald Trump, brought America back to the forefront of this age-old tragedy when he described immigrants, “they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists.” In fact, we are all susceptible to this human condition of depriving people of dignity: to place blame, to persecute, to erase a people. In a time as complicated and demanding as now and through tears, I must share with you these stories as each account is all-to-ordinary to skip. It’s important to note, this is not a foreign tale, but a sinister plot unresolved in our backyard. While our own history is littered with violence and unease, I hope that you might rise above the current noise. I also wish you peace along our shared, long road ahead.

As uncertain as the Rio Grande River’s flow, I welcome you to Miguel’s life. Despite his parents’ gang-related murders in El Salvador and a dangerous 1,500 mile trek as a child, Miguel’s search for the American dream ended, because he was brave, vulnerable, and honest. In another dream shortly before his expulsion from the U.S., Miguel shared a nightmare with a counselor working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The counselor was bound by contract to share with authorities that Miguel had woken in terror and dreamed “that he was the one who killed his parents.” Afterall, Miguel feared going back to his country of origin as he would either be killed or forced to join the gang that had taken their lives. Although the counselor understood his nightmare in context, the U.S. prosecutor used this reason to boot him from ever becoming a documented immigrant.

Photo by author.

In the weeks prior to hearing this story, I had been meeting regularly in a church parlor with a group loosely called Friends of Borderlands Ministries. We debated actions that could be taken to counter immigration raids, the militarized masked officers who might concentrate on arresting criminals, yet were also given an order by Stephen Miller to arrest 3,000 people per day–grandmas, cooks, students, professionals, construction workers, and farm hands. In reality, we are all the folks in the parlor–angry, in deep sorrow, feeling powerless, and even frustrated. But over the next months, this local table continued to show up and yearned to do more. At one meeting, we were informed a group of Episcopalian priests would be “making a pilgrimage” across the Southern Border. They planned to hold prayer vigils at detention centers where migrants were being imprisoned. Finally, the group agreed on something. We must show our support, visit these centers with them, and amplify the stories our government is hiding.

Photo by author.

On a warm morning in June, I traveled to Sierra Blanca, Texas. This is the same town that’s well-known for the Border Patrol checkpoint that confiscated American icons, Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson’s, stashes. It’s not much more than a sleepy, poverty-stricken small town where folks traveling west to El Paso quickly drive by in the dust. For me, I had one destination in mind—the West Texas Detention Center. The facility once operated by the (Texas) State Department of Criminal Justice, originally used to house homegrown felons, is now operated by a for-profit company with the sole purpose of imprisoning undocumented migrants. They are the people you hear about who are picked up in Immigration Courts after claiming asylum, at Home Depots, or in the back of restaurants. It’s a prison for those seeking a better life, asylum, and the American dream, but also easy picks to hit a quota. “Clay McConnell will not discuss [the private prison’s] balance sheets, but the family business exists to make money. ‘I’m not running a nonprofit,’ he said.” That morning, I stood in the waiting room of LaSalle Management LLC’s flagship migrant center and watched a confused human being through a small window. Maybe family was coming, although I also hoped his guest would be a lawyer. I thought to myself, “This is jail.” This was also where Miguel spent his last months in the “land of the free” before being discarded into Mexico. Surprising enough, compared to too many stories recounted that day, he was in some way lucky.

LaSalle Corrections, a family-owned management company, and its webbed affiliates and subsidiaries, for presumably tax and liability purposes, manage at least 18 jails and prisons across the United States. To be fair, in the private prison world, they’re small potatoes. However, the company and its founder, Bill McConnell, Clay’s dad, has long been accused of corporatizing and lowering standards in Louisiana’s criminal justice system, which holds the highest incarcerated jailed population per capita in the country. This was after Bill ventured away from the senior living business and his RUSH Ministries went defunct. Texas only ranks second to Louisiana’s prison population, holding more than five times as many inmates per capita than the United Kingdom. And, the USA, per capita, holds more prisoners than any other country in the world. But, their story will have to be saved for another day.

Photo by author.

As early as 2020, “the [U.S.] House Committee on Oversight and Reform issued a lengthy report that found that detainees died in for-profit [migrant] detention centers after receiving inadequate medical care, among other findings.” You can reasonably assume that even someone seemingly healthy and then fed maggots will get sick, and if you’ve traveled thousands of miles, there’s a good chance of an infection. Yet, no one stands a chance here. These facilities continue to operate despite consistently failing inspections, including citations for soiled rooms, sexual abuse, and “barbaric” and “negligent” conditions. I’ve heard stories of former Marines turned ICE agents, “If I did this in Afghanistan, I would have been prosecuted for war crimes.” When I walked in the detention center in June, the walls were covered in employee posters asking them to report allegations of abuse directly to the company. Those posters were in direct conflict with another seemingly opposite order on an opposing wall–all allegations of abuse must be reported directly to the Department of Justice. Still, despite the documented inhumane, barbaric quarters, Miguel survived. Thankfully so, yet in this country a company profited off his abduction and suffering.

I found it hard to write this story. Per typical Progress Texas style, this was not rapid response news. I also find it hard to watch regular broadcasts in a country that has always strived to be “a more perfect union,” and until recently, the center of human rights. Yet most difficult, I find it hard to love the oppressor or at least humanize them too. But, if I’ve learned anything this past month, it’s that we must rise above their prejudice and hate. As Michelle Obama said, “When they go low, we go high!” I also think Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Viktor Frankl, Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela would humanize all people in order to stomp out the dehumanization that inevitably leads to persecution. From Man’s Search for Meaning, "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 

U.S. based, Japanese internment camp, 1944, via Getty Images.

Migrants inside the fence of a makeshift detention center in El Paso, Texas, 2019, via BBC.

From my meager quoting of a person who survived Auschwitz and met death every day, I ask you the obvious, to not give into a tyrant, but more so–to not push away any misguided follower from coming home to their heart. This mindful cross-examination is in honor of the following humans, children and Miguel. The artwork and stories below were created by Tuscon-based multi-media artist and illustrator Michelina Nicotera-Taxiera in June, 2025. Her work was commissioned for the “Migration with Dignity” pilgrimage in order to amplify the real-life and ongoing atrocities at American detention centers. May these children, who passed in President Trump’s first administration, rest in peace and power. We will never truly know how many there were or might soon be to mourn.

MARIEE JUAREZ, 20 months old, Guatemala, Died: May 10, 2018

After her death, Mariee’s mother Yazmin testified before Congress on July 10th, 2019. She said that “it is painful for me to relive this experience; but I am here because the world should know what is happening to many children inside ICE detention…I’m here today because I don’t want any more little angels to suffer like Mariee. I don’t want other mothers and fathers to lose their children.” Mariee died on May 10th (which is Guatemala’s Mother’s Day) of a viral infection she contracted in detention.

DARLYN CRISTOBAL CORDOVA-VALLE, 10 years old, El Salvador, Died: Sept. 29, 2018 

Darlyn had the courage to leave her small town in El Salvador by herself. She crossed the border with some family friends. She was trying to reach Nebraska where her mother lived. She died while in ICE custody of fever and respiratory distress.

JAKELIN CAAL MAQUIN, 7 years old, Guatemala, Died: Dec. 8th, 2018 

Jakelin lived in an Indigenous community of Guatemala. She and her father traveled to the U.S. to escape the dangerous situation in their home country. Her grandfather remembered her jumping for joy when she found out they were migrating. Three days after her 7th birthday she died of complications from strep infection while in Border Patrol Custody. In her village a heart is constructed of wood to honor her.

FELIPE GOMEZ ALONZO, 8 years old, Guatemala, Died: Dec. 24, 2018 

Felipe came to the U.S. with his father in mid-December. His rural community was suffering from lack of food because of climate-change induced drought. His parents decided that the father would make the journey north so that he could find work and that Felipe would accompany him. Felipe hoped the extra money they would make could help him buy a bicycle of his own. Felipe died in detention on Christmas Eve of the flu.

JUAN DE LEON GUTIERREZ, 16 years old, Guatemala, Died: April 30th 2019 

Juan’s former teachers called him “a humble child full of dreams...cheerful, intelligent, creative but shy”. He helped his father in the coffee fields; but drought due to climate change and depressed prices forced them to find alternatives. Juan left home by himself and migrated north to help support his family. He died of complications from infection while in ICE custody.

WILMER JOSE RAMIREZ VASQUEZ, 2 years old, Guatemala, Died: May 14th, 2019 

In Wilmer’s village there was extreme drought. There was no work and food was scarce and no available medical care. His mother left with him from their home in March. It took them 22 days to make the journey. He died of multiple intestinal and respiratory infections after being in the custody of Border Control.

CARLOS HERNANDEZ VASQUEZ, 16 years old, Guatemala, Died: May 20th 2019 

Carlos was a standout student and leader at the village school he attended in his remote village. He was captain of the soccer team and excelled in playing musical instruments like the trumpet. Money was so tight in his family that Carlos would do farm work and odd jobs to help out. In early May he left his village with his older sister to seek work in the north to financially support his family. While in Border Patrol custody he contracted influenza. His fever shot up to 104 and instead of getting medical care he was put in an isolation cell where he died. More than 2,000 people attended his funeral in his home village.

What’s next:

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, our federal government is planning to expand ICE detention facilities, including private migrant prisons in at least 10 states. In the federal budget signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, your Congress allocated $45 billion to expand immigrant detention. Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project said, “This expansion is a disastrous waste of billions of taxpayer dollars that will only line the coffers of the private prison industry.” But, I’ll say more, your tax dollars will line coffins under the false guise of safety. It’s time for you to find a Friends of the Borderlands Ministries near you or organize “your own parlor.” Detention centers, like the people our government is arresting, are not just along the Rio Grande. Still, with humility, I bestow one piece of advice. Sam Karas of the Big Bend Sentinel wrote, quoting my friend Father Mike Wallens, “If you have a coalition and everyone agrees, it’s not big enough.” With American values being tossed at the wayside and through any struggle, community is all we’ve got left. It’s now your turn to start a movement.

 

 

 

 

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