The Most Marvelous Border in the World

Bright yellow wall with a painting of a basket of produce and the words "El Co-op"

Do I start with the mind or the heart? Will you be more moved by learning that illegal immigrants pay into our dwindling Social Security program but don’t receive Social Security benefits? Or by a reminder that our neighbor is any person in need whom we encounter?

I’ve created a graphic timeline of the last 100 years of U.S. immigration policy to share with you, but I worry that facts are too boring these days. I’ve written an article about what makes someone an American, but I wonder if you trust my perspective enough to read it.

To put you at ease, I’ll give you my perspective up front. Then you don’t have to worry that I’m going to passive-aggressively attack your beliefs. I live in a border state with one of the highest immigrant populations in the country, both legal and illegal. I’ve studied both historic and current U.S. immigration in depth. I’m by no means an expert, but I am well-informed and personally invested.

Here is my perspective: Immigrants are the lifeblood of the United States of America. They (we) always have been. American immigration policy has, more often than not, reflected the whims and fears of a critical mass of the American public than it has any real strategy to protect its interests. Whenever America faces a problem, immigrants are often the first to be blamed, and their human and civil rights are the first to be disregarded. This is not okay with me; not as a human, not as a Christian, not as an American.

I’ll start with the heart. Or the spirit, rather. Last week, I went to El Paso and Ciudad Juárez on the southern border. Months ago, I filled out an interest form for a “Border Encounter” with a group called We Choose Welcome on Instagram. The interest form asked why I wanted to go on the trip, if I had a current passport, and whether I would be available January 27-31, 2025. And now you know as much about the trip as I did when I committed.

I went so I could learn what was actually happening at the border. The border is always in the news. I get fliers from my state and local politicians talking about how they are doing their best to stem the tide of criminals that Biden is letting into our country with his open borders. Based on what I had found in my research, that seemed dubious, but I wanted to see for myself.

The timing of the trip was dramatic: one week after President Trump took office. He did a lot that first week. I wasn’t sure how the administration change would affect the on-the-ground reality at the border. I was nervous that the trip would be uncomfortable, depressing, maybe even dangerous.

It was the opposite.

The border is joy.

It is la frontera mas maravillosa del mundo—the most marvelous border in the world, one of the speakers told us. She made us repeat it with her.

Among the social workers, the pastors, and the bridge-builders of the borderlands, I found the spirit of a warm, capable mother. Yes, she is tired. Yes, she gets frustrated with the unpredictable man who lives upstairs, who hands out $100 bills one day and smashes all the furniture in a fit of rage the next.

But this mother knows her work: to shelter and clothe her children, and their friends, and the stragglers in the neighborhood. She inspires and empowers them. She brings out the best in them, encouraging them to care for one another with mutuality. She spins gold out of straw and feeds a thousand people with the masa she ground with her own strong hands.

It was a balm to my soul to be swept into something good that was larger than me, that started long before I showed up and will continue long after I’m gone.

I heard this spirit of a mother in the words of the waitress who addressed an older woman in our group as mi reina—my queen. I tasted it in the refried beans served to us with love on sope, a thick, fried corn tortilla with raised edges to keep all the good stuff on. I saw it in the pride of the migrant woman whose husband was out helping at other shelters in the city, even as her own family’s plans crumbled with the cancellation of their CBP One appointment.

In El Paso, we visited a community center, Ciudad Nueva (New City). The Food Co-op Coordinator, Alma, told us she was first introduced to the center when her kids began attending its after-school program. She began volunteering there and eventually, begrudgingly, agreed to get paid for five hours a week even though she was working thirty. Now she runs the co-op, and her enthusiasm is contagious.

“People call and ask how they can help, and I say, ‘Can you be here in ten minutes to unload a shipment of fruit?’ There’s no schedule,” she says, laughing. “Everyone just helps how they can.”

I spent three days with people—both locals and the other trip participants—who are devoted, in their daily lives, to advocating for those whom society squeezes out. No one was there to virtue signal. We weren’t even allowed to take pictures of the people at the migrant shelter, which would have made for some juicy content. I was immersed in good old-fashioned Beatitudes mentality, which was its own reward. For a minute, I lived in the house built on the rock. It felt marvelously sturdy.

The trip re-framed my approach to the immigration conversation. We zoomed way out. The Mexico-U.S. border does not even rank in the top ten humanitarian crises in the world right now. Those would be Syria, Palestine, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, DR Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. I expect that, if I were to visit any of those places, I would find strength and beauty similar to what I found in our borderlands.

The United States is not the world’s savior we like to think of ourselves as. We have about 5% of the world’s population and use about 25% of its resources, but only receive about 1-2% of its displaced people. That number will be dramatically smaller under the new Trump administration. We got ninety-nine problems, but being overly generous on the global stage ain't one.

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I’m still going to share my precious timeline with you, along with the article. Probably two articles, realistically. (One of my best friends told me she "couldn't get through" my abortion piece, which I'm taking as my cue to stop writing 8,000-word articles.)

The first will be philosophical; I’ll tell you why I think immigrants are the lifeblood of America and why we should care about them. The second will be the nuts and bolts of immigration under the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. We’ll define terms: immigrant, migrant, refugee, asylum seeker, legal, illegal, undocumented, ICE, CBP, and more. We’ll talk about trafficking, Laiken Riley, the cartels—all of it. In the meantime, if you see me, please pry my Phone Screen of Doom out of my grubby little hands. Remind me to be like Alma and Rosi and Toya--focused on caring for my neighbor, whomever my neighbor happens to be that day.

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When the food pantry portion of Ciudad Nueva had outgrown its space, Alma was given a storage room full of dusty furniture. “I just started throwing stuff outside,” she says, laughing again. “Then I found some old paint in the corner and I called my family. ‘Come up here and help me!’ So they came and we painted the walls.’ She gestures to the turquoise and yellow walls and the brightly colored tissue paper flowers hanging from the ceiling. “I wanted it to be a happy place.”