At The Border

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — In the span of about 18 hours, we’ve moved from bearing witness to a vigil remembering the lives of 22 Hispanic victims of a white nationalist killer in an El Paso Walmart to a dusty, back street center for migrants where one can practically see the heat rising in waves.

There are people back home who know about the journey I’d be taking with JSurge founder Rabbi Steven Bayar. More than one posts on social media, “what should we do with those people (the migrants), put them up in a Hilton?”

Ciudad Juarez – Today we journeyed on a Teddy Bear mission.

Along with the comfort given to children by the brown, toy “stuffies,” we spent considerable time on the inside of the Casa Del Migrante in one of Juarez’s seemingly endless broken neighborhoods.

Drab grey cracking concrete and cinder block crumbling into worn patches of dirt alongside bumpy, pock marked streets. Tired, scraggly trees offered little relief from the hot summer sun. Charred ruins of what were once stores are a common sight. Their owners didn’t pay the price demanded by the cartels to remain in business. Consequently, they burn.

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — She could be your daughter, your sister or your best friend.

Her favorite band is Queen. She smiles at the band’s famous lyrics “we will, we will rock you.” She’s read every Harry Potter book multiple times.

Amy, 16, left Honduras 10 days ago with her father.

El Paso, TX – Aug. 4, 2019 – “El Paso Strong.”

Those words Sunday on digital traffic boards along I-10 in this Texas city bordering Mexico couldn’t mask a pervasive sense of sorrow.

The day before, 22 people of Hispanic origin were murdered, and 24 seriously wounded, while shopping in a Walmart. The shooter, a white nationalist racist, traveled over 500 miles and hunted down Hispanic people like prey in the store aisles.

We are going to El Paso “because we are not hypocrites. How many High Holiday sermons will stress how we must take care of the needy, feed the hungry and care for the sick? How many times does the sermon on Shabbat morning inform us that the Torah cares for those who are oppressed? How many times do we walk out of a service, Jewish or otherwise, comfortable with our ethics?
“Yet we allow our government to create conditions where children are abused and die. Don’t confuse the issues. We are not talking about immigration: legal or illegal – we are talking about basic human dignity and rights. For everyone who asserts that our government is racist and goes home to their families in safety, this is a wakeup call to what racism can lead to.”