To see as God sees- From illegal immigrants to resilient survivors

Children praying
Children praying before they participated in activities that Arloa Bontrager's church's youth group planned while the youth group stayed in El Sauce

​Arloa Bontrager is the program director for SOOP and Youth Venture. She attends Walnut Hill Mennonite Church in Goshen, Ind.

Luke 10:29-37

But the man wanted to show that he knew what he was talking about. So he asked Jesus, “Who are my neighbors?”

Jesus replied, “As a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, robbers attacked him and grabbed everything he had. They beat him up and ran off, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road. But when he saw the man, he walked by on the other side. Later a temple helper came to the same place. But when he saw the man who had been beaten up, he also went by on the other side. A man from Samaria then came traveling along that road. When he saw the man, he felt sorry for him and went over to him. He treated his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put him on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next morning he gave the innkeeper two silver coins and said, “Please take care of the man. If you spend more than this on him, I will pay you when I return.” Then Jesus asked, “Which one of these three people was a real neighbor to the man who was beaten up by robbers?”

The teacher answered, “The one who showed pity.”

Jesus said, “Go and do the same!”

​It all started when the youth group took a trip to the United States-Mexico border with BorderLinks. While I wasn’t able to join them, this profound experience at the Mennonite Church USA convention in Phoenix led my church (Walnut Hill Mennonite, in Goshen, Ind.) to delve deeper, and learn more about an immigrant’s story.

Last year, I joined a church group that visited the Alterna Community, in La Grange, Ga. There we visited a detention center and listened as detainees told their experiences in the United States. A few months later, my group left for Guatemala City, to hear from families whose loved ones had gone north.

Our last day was spent in Guatemala City visiting Casa del Migrante, a house of refuge for migrants traveling both directions. Carlos Lopez, the director, talked to us about the reasons people migrate, and the dangerous, dangerous journey many face. I was struck by his comment that those who make it into the United States are truly survivors. How might our personal and national perceptions change if we used language such as resilient and survivors instead of illegal or alien?

His words framed my thoughts for our encounters later in the day as we waited outside the military air force base in Guatemala City for the arrival of two planes from the United States carrying nearly 200 deported men. We mingled with families outside a gated area where people peered through, trying to see what was happening inside.

As I stared at the gate, I intentionally looked directly into the face of everyone who walked through that door, so that they would not be the face of an “issue,” but that I would “see” them, not just see them, but really see them, and so that I would actively see the humanity and the beloved child of God in each person that walked through that gate.

My plan worked well—for a while. As I watched these ordinary men emerge from the gate, observing their range of emotions, I found my own emotions stirring at a heart level. I became overwhelmed as I imagined their stories. We had heard the cries of the immigrants when we visited Stewart Detention Center in April, but to see the next part of that process in Guatemala was moving. By the time the second plane arrived, I felt tears streaming down my face.

One particular family caught my attention. A mother and her three adult children were waiting for their son and brother who had been in the United States for 14 years. We learned he had been in a detention center for about six months , which is unusually long and likely meant he was fighting his deportation because there was something (like a job), or someone (a family), for which he wanted to stay. As he arrived, he was greeted with great joy by his family. He and his brother supported their mother who was so overcome with emotion that she nearly fainted. He looked to be in his early 30s and must have left his family in his late teens. I thought of my own teenage sons and wondered how painful it would be to be separated from them for 14 years, to not be able to watch them grow up. I guessed this man had possibly started a family in the United States. I wondered about the loved ones he was forced to leave behind. A wife? Children? Would he be able to hug and kiss his children again, or would he watch them grow up via Facetime or Skype? My heart broke as I imagined the separations surrounding this entire family on many levels. Joy and sorrow intermingled.

Our time at “the gate” impacted me greatly. As I looked into the eyes and faces of all those who came through, I wondered why the great offense of migration causes my government to capture and detain them, and also at great expense, remove them from this piece of earth we call ours and send them to the piece of earth we call theirs. Ours and theirs. Boundaries and borders. Us and them. Not brothers, not sisters, not neighbors. Who IS my neighbor? Will I be the one who passes by, or the one who has compassion on them?