Traveling A Journey of Hope

January marks the fourth year I have worked as a chaplain at the Federal Detention Center in Florence, Arizona. It is an immigration detention center for persons in deportation proceedings.

Every day, we have a population of 1200-1300 detainees. Some of them are housed at our facility while others are sent to various other prisons, other detention centers, or a county jail nearby. Florence is a small town,but it has at least seven detention or prison facilities.

The largest number (70-75%) of detainees here at our facility comes from Guatemala and Mexico. We also have detainees from different countries such as Honduras, the Philippines, Russia, Israel, Ethiopia, China, and India. On any given day, it is possible that over 75 or 80 countries are represented here.

What does all of this tell us about immigration in 2012, not only here in the United States, but throughout the world? There are literally millions of people throughout the world on the move. They are displaced within their own countries, running for their lives, and unable to survive physically, financially and spiritually. Many of them seek refuge here in our country to survive.

Part of my job as chaplain is to teach a course on cultural diversity for Immigration, Customs Enforcement officers and medical personnel. Over the years this course has touched on concerns such as: 

1. Understanding our own diversity individually and as a country.
2. Understanding world religions.
3. Understanding particular elements (eg. history, geography, gender roles, economy, social and health issues) of cultures represented here in our facility.

Many of the indigenous people arriving here do not speak the dominant language of their own country. They have never known anything but subsistence farming and that has not sustained them. They have had little education and are victims of their own government's corruption, inability to control crime and political upheaval and have little or no access to justice.

These refugees, these people displaced by the circumstances in their countries, have so much to teach us about the gospel.

SHORT HISTORY OF ONE DETAINEE:
"Elsa" was a recent indigenous detainee from Guatemala. I met her when she came to the Detention Center. She related that she and her mother had been raped on several occasions by masked men who came to her house. She had had two children from these rapes, and had just learned when she was sent to medical at the detention center that she was pregnant for a third time. When I asked her how she was doing, how she felt about her pregnancy, she said, "It's not the baby's fault.  But none of my children has a father. I want them to have a father." Elsa had reported the rapes to officials in her town. Nothing changed. She had to leave her two children alone with her mother to try to find a way to help all of them survive.

This is just one story of desperation. So many coming to this country are seeking a better life for their families and themselves. Safety and financial stability are the motivating factors for traveling to the United States.

There are many "Elsas" who need our understanding and support.