Javier, a member of our church whose name I’ve changed for this story, was born in Nicaragua, but in search of a safer, more secure life, he walked the 3,000+ miles to the U.S. southern border, where he turned himself in and was granted asylum papers. During the last three years, with the help of a lawyer, he has acquired a work permit and a Social Security number. As a legal “asylee,” he has worked steadily, paid all the required taxes, and is currently working with his lawyer in hopes of acquiring a green card. He was baptized in our church and is married to a U.S. citizen; they are now raising two young children.
Not long ago, I was part of a group from our church that accompanied Javier to the local office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Others from our congregation, pastors included, had made the trip multiple times before to accompany church members who had also been summoned. This time, my first, there were six of us in the van that took off at 6:30 a.m. from the parking lot of our church: two of our pastors, another elder and me, and Javier and his wife.
Javier was summoned for an unstated reason and was understandably nervous about what this unexpected order might mean. I was invited to provide emotional and spiritual encouragement but also, I was to learn later, something else.
I didn’t know what to expect, and, among other things, I was afraid for my friend Pastor Angel—a Mexican-born U.S. citizen. As he’s told me, “People like me are always in some danger here because of our brown skin and our accent.” I wondered: would there be masked men in Army fatigues at the entrance? Would they try to deport Angel as well as Javier? Would two families be devastated because of their skin color and accent? I had no idea.
Since English was still difficult for Javier, Pastor Angel, who was driving, offered us some background on Javier’s visit. For three years, while his application for asylum was being processed, he had been reporting monthly to this ICE office using the app on his cellphone. He was told nothing about the reason for the in-person visit—just that he had to be there on time. Both he and Angel felt there was a 50/50 chance Javier would be deported back to Nicaragua where, Angel later told me, he had no family left and would, certainly, be jailed. As we approached our exit, Pastor Ryan, who purposefully wore his clerical collar for the occasion, offered a prayer for Javier and his family.
We parked in a small lot next to a non-descript, three-story office building. There was no indication that this building was in any way associated with ICE. In fact, all I recognized was an inviting-looking coffee shop attached to the front of the building, off to the side, which we passed by. Just through the doors a sign on the wall by the elevators listed the businesses on each floor, but it was unclear where the ICE office was; however, Angel and Javier had been there before and took us to Floor 3.
The elevator opened to an empty hallway, maybe five-feet across, lit by fluorescent lights, with several closed doors to the left and the right. Across from our elevator was a closed door with an opaque window with some identification on it, but nothing to indicate an ICE office. Javier pressed the button for entrance, and a woman’s voice came through a small speaker saying, “How can I help you?”
“I’m here for my appointment,” Javier replied.
“Who are all those people with you?” the unseen voice responded.
“It’s my wife and some friends from my church.”
“Only one person is allowed in the office. The one with the appointment.”
“Can my wife come with me, please?”
“Only the person with the appointment is allowed in the office,” this time a little slower and a bit louder.
We stood in the hallway, not sure what to do. We had no intention of breaking the rules, but it also wasn’t clear where we could go, since there was no waiting room, no chairs anywhere in sight, just an empty hallway. Javier tried the door handle again.
“I will ONLY let you in,” the voice commanded, “when the rest of your group is in the elevator and the door is CLOSED. They must then WAIT in their car in the parking lot.”
Dutifully, we turned back to the elevator, holding the door as Javier said goodbye to his wife. I wasn’t the only one praying this wouldn’t be the last time they’d ever see each other. When she joined us in the elevator, we pressed the button for the ground floor. Over the soft thrum of the elevator, one of us asked, “They can’t order us around like that, can they?”
“No,” another replied. “But if we don’t obey, Javier will be in trouble.”
“Well, they can’t keep us from stopping for coffee,” Pastor Ryan said, as we stepped out of the elevator. “Coffee for everyone. My treat.”
We found a table and a waitress brought our coffee. After a few sips, Javier’s wife got a text from her husband. “He says we have to be in the car, not the coffee shop, or they will call the police.” After some quips about “Big Brother,” we stood and asked for to-go cups. Our waitress quickly complied, and when Pastor Ryan offered his credit card, she waved it away. “It’s just coffee. You’re fine,” she said, leading us to wonder if she was used to this happening to people who came from “Floor 3,” free coffee being her quiet protest.
We went back to the car, wondering where all the cameras were, and half-joking that we probably should sit in the same seats we came in because, by then, we all knew Javier would be the one to pay if we resisted in any way. Just six months earlier, Angel later shared with me, he had accompanied another friend to this same office and saw him immediately deported. Waiting in the van, we sipped our coffee, made a few more nervous jokes about our treatment while worrying about Javier’s fate and the consequences for his family.
Then, after about ten minutes, there was Javier, standing at the end of the parking lot, smiling at us with hands cautiously raised in victory. His wife jumped out and hugged him, and when he climbed back in we all cheered and shook his hand. Pastor Angel was driving down the street, heading for the highway, when Javier informed us, in his broken English, that he was told that if he brings a group like ours next time, they would certainly call the police.
Once on the highway, Pastor Angel asked me to offer a prayer, which I gladly did. Javier then explained to Angel in Spanish what had taken place in the office: a lot of “yelling and screaming” about why he brought so many people along. Angel later explained to me that he and Javier knew all along that none of us but Javier would be allowed inside the office. “We’ve been there before. It’s how they do it. But we’ve also learned that when they see through their little camera that we are not alone, it changes things. Especially when pastors are present. They knew Javier had support.” Then he added, “Javier knew that the yelling and screaming was just the price he had to pay, but that having a group there to support him—pastors, especially—was the only reason, he thinks, he was allowed to stay in this country. You see, their job becomes harder, the more people a deportee seems to be connected to. They aren’t so brave then.”
When we asked Javier what the meeting was actually for, he told us they simply wanted him to add a piece of information on the app each month. Why didn’t they just text that request? Why the forty-five-minute drive? Or, at the very least, why didn’t they tell him the nature of the visit, so he wouldn’t have worried so much?
The only answer seems to be that they have power over Javier to get him to jump through all the hoops they want, and if he misses one, presumably, they will have cause to deport him. If he wants his asylum request to progress, he will comply with every request—no matter how senseless, inconvenient, or cruel.
Their power extended to each one of us there. While they couldn’t legally make us skip the coffee shop and wait in our car like reprimanded children, they certainly had the power to do so. They knew we would comply because we cared for Javier.
Let’s be clear: it’s a long way from being pulled out of an apartment building in the middle of the night by heavily-armed masked men and sent to jail for possible deportation, as has happened to many Latinos, to simply being ordered, as we were that morning, to go sit in our car and wait if we wanted our friend to have his meeting. I get that—it was just an inconvenience, a mere taste—at best—of injustice. But a stated ICE quota of 3,000 arrests a day would terrify me if I were Latino. As a white man, I cannot fully imagine the depth of their terror.
Our visit that morning to the ICE office was enough to make me feel ashamed of my country. It made me angry at the way our President and his staff flaunt their power from afar, making life miserable, frightening, and too often tragic for those whose actual faces they never see, whose hearts they will never know, and whose depth of humanity they will never understand.
But, thanks to Javier, I also know this: sometimes, when brothers and sisters stand together for the sake of justice, Big Brother chickens out.
45 Responses
Reading your account brought chills to my back. This is America? The land of the free?
Thank you for sharing this shocking and sobering experience.
Thank you for this, Mark.
This is not the America I love. This evil administration must be dealt with. Corruption, thirst for power, love of money is not the American way.
Mark, I have chills. Thank you for sharing this story. You were there for Javier that day, but you were also there to bear witness — so the rest of us can read this and more fully grasp the terror and injustice that feel impossible to believe, yet undeniably happening.
Thank you for this story of standing with your brother. Praying that a good will hold those who inflect and support this kind of injustice to account.
Javier. Angel. Your church. You, Mark. My heart is bursting with thanks for you all, and for you telling of it with such grace, skill, and power.
Thank you for taking me so vividly on that trip to support Javier and his wife. I felt the anxiety of the feared possible known but unknown. The experience somehow reminds me of a line in The Wizard of Oz: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It seems there was also fear and anxiety on the other side of that door; possibly caused by your support in numbers. You remind me to keep praying and find ways to show up.
ICE is a domestic terror organization paid for by US taxpayers. When I was in Argentina, during its Durty War in the late 1970s, I took comfort knowing that having jack-booted, armed and masked thugs disapoearing people off the streets could never happen in the U.S. It is traumatizing for me to witness this happening here. Thank you for making this all too real to us.
Thanks Mark for accompanying Javier and telling the story. ICE stalks the neighborhoods here in Chicago. They raided a Halloween block party near my son’s home. A kindergarten classmate of my granddaughter was tear gassed. Such a brutal exercise, by masked thugs. My Uncle Ernie was a Chicago cop for decades and he never covered his face.
This demonstration of brotherly love and compassion is heartwarming as cowardice and cruelty continue to be on display in our country. God, ready more companions to walk with your brown-skinned people.
Thanks for clarifying why I’m feeling the need to scream lately; scream and pray.
Just wondering when the nightmare will be over.
speechless
Such a powerful eye-opening nightmarish account! So grateful for your presence with Javier, and so disturbed over the many who have no advocates.
Thank you to all who are standing with those who need justice to roll down. Thank you for your courage and willingness to represent “Christ with us.”
Thank you, Mark. Your story is a chilling reminder of the terror I felt as a young boy when the Nazis approached our home looking for their victims, and we had one in hiding, standing next to me, watching them come.
Like Javier, he remained “safe.”
I could never imagine that the “land of the free” we came to would one day begin to feel like my occupied country in WWII.
Yes, scream our protests, pray for courage, and resist en masse.
Henry,
I can’t even imagine what you and your family and your hidden human being, standing next to you, felt. Your story goes far beyond any fear I myself faced that day. Have you shared that story? If so, where? I would like to read it.
As I read all the comments, I sense a deep sense of outrage and concern….but, BUT those have to turn into tangible action…..call a congressman who’s supporting all of this. Contact a senator, give her/him reasons to see that changes are desperately needed…as a citizen, born here, you can do something….something some of us cannot do…
Thank you for sharing your experience. As a volunteer for GR Rapid Response to ICE, I have had the same experience. Yes, even having GRPD called and threatening me with trespassing.
Maybe we don’t share the same religion, we both care about the mistreatment of our brothers and sisters.
Thanks again for everything
We had a couple of these painful experiences here in Lynden, WA. A few months ago, 37 men from a local roofing crew were arrested and deported, leaving behind numerous families. Three weeks ago, a young man was arrested, after tearing off the door of his girlfriend’s apartment and violating all her civil rights. Someone videoed the event, and placed it online. I counted 16 officers on the scene. As bad, a press release to local news outlets was chockfull of lies, trying to cover-up the outrageous facts of really happened. This is America??
In the realm of “what if?” I can’t help but wonder if we all wouldn’t be in a better place if blanket amnesty had been given to all those “who don’t belong in the US” while at the same time addressing matters of border security. I fear given the ecological crisis the world is facing and the mass population migration likely to result countries, the US and Canada included, are in for bigger problems than we’ve even begun to imagine.
I agree that it is time for a bipartisan effort to grant amnesty. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act into law, providing a path to legal status for almost 3 million undocumented immigrants in the USA. The following decades proved to be some of the most prosperous in our nation’s history. Instead of deporting hard-working immigrants who are contributing to our economy, we should be welcoming them to stay.
Indeed!
Thank you Mark for sharing your experience with ICE. You have motivated Keith and I to get involved with a local Rapid Response Team!
Mark,
What all those above said. This humbly eloquent embodiment of fear, courage, and cruelty is a declaration and should be published in every newspaper and form of media, placed in public places, flood officials, and sped from email to email.
You have composed a proclamation for all who transcend power with love, care, and the transformation of human into humane.
Yes! So beautifully stated!
I am so ashamed of our government and what they are doing with ICE. Their treatment of people is reprehensible!
I sent a copy of Mark’s essay to Congressman Huizenga’s office and asked for his response. Specifically, if he supported how these Christians (who live in his district) were treated. I get a response less than 50% of the time to my inquiries. We’ll see if he responds to this one. Thank you Mark.
I did the same. Maybe everyone who read it should do the same. It’s hard to sit with this kind of anger and not know how to help.
Just adding an Amen! Faith without action is meaningless.
What if Javier had simply done what ICE had requested? What motivated the extra “protection” for Javier? I’m troubled by the fact that there wasn’t even one respondent who acknowledged the trauma that we all know ICE agents experience from paid protesters. The stated goal of the deportation program is to deport “People who have entered the country illegally and have criminal convictions”. Javier isn’t one of those and I’m pretty sure that if he had simply complied (yes, he had reason to be nervous because it’s the government, I’ve been called to an IRS inquiry and even that is intimidating) that there wouldn’t have been any story to report. My point is that I’m struck by the blanket, angry condemnation of “our country”?? By a bunch of Christian ministers and scholars?? The best response was to write our congressman. If things are as bad as the rest suggested, nobody would have dared to even comment.
Doing what ICE requested does not mean that there is a good ending. Many have gone to court hearing, simply doing what was required and found themselves deported. ICE is not working in good faith because of the pressure to deport so many, they simply cannot focus on the criminals because there are not enough of them to make quota. Even when ICE proclaims they are arresting criminals, they most often are not. CATO institute notes that the vast majority of people being arrested and deported have no criminal record. And then there is this https://www.propublica.org/article/chicago-venezuela-immigration-ice-fbi-raids-no-criminal-charges
Jeremy, I disagree. Are you saying that Javier’s wife shouldn’t have been allowed because of the violence and threats experienced by ICE? Really? A misdemeanor is a misdemeanor and a felony is a felony, but if you or I do “naughty” things we expect “due process”, or at the least, respect. Oh the “self deportment” you suggest, of course negates or gives no consideration to the reason the “illegals“ crossed the border in the first place, whether for economic reasons or physical reasons i.e. fear of fear of violence. If all or even many of people here illegally, would self deport, we would all pay a whole lot including what we might pay for fruits and vegetables. In other words, our economy benefits from the work done by “illegals”. A recent quote I heard from a journalist, “Instead of ICE deporting the “worst of the worst”, Ice has hired the “worst of the worst” to carry out their missions We need and should welcome legal immigrants to our country but there are very few paths available for legal immigration
Well said, Ron. The simple and well-documented reason why the building doesn’t have a bright “ICE” sign on it and the officials won’t allow a group of people to accompany the individual inside is because of the extreme violence and threats of violence levied on ICE officers. ICE should be commended for removing many criminals and rescuing so many children.
It sounds like Javier had his papers in order and was promptly sent right back out the door. I imagine he is thankful for the support he had but also thankful he chose the lawful route.
Anyone not lawfully in the US by definition, has committed a crime and is a criminal. They have every opportunity to leave on their own accord (possibly even with monetary help from the US government). Or they can continue breaking the law and hide dishonestly in the shadows from the authorities. I hope the author and other commentators here wouldn’t encourage the latter.
Good Morning and Happy Thursday, Jeremy! Thanks for your comment. I don’t disagree with your point and am curious how to think more on this.
A genuine question for you that I’ve struggled with quite a bit here:
What do you perceive as the proper balance between submission to authority and love and protection of the foreigner? Both are very clear biblical commands.
In these contexts, what does it look like to possess a faith that respects and honors authority while simultaneously loving mercy and not keeping a record of wrongs of our neighbor?
Your conclusion sounds like Jews should have freely turned themselves in during WWII. They were disobeying Nazi law and should simply submit unto death. What disobedient sinners! They committed a crime and are therefore criminals.
Additionally, is it not possible that ICE has also used unlawful methods in their work? If so, they too have committed crimes and are now criminals.
In our attempts to be faithful, how do we go about honoring and loving both unlawful authority as well as disobedient sinners?
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/FINAL_criminalizing_undocumented_immigrants_issue_brief_PUBLIC_VERSION.pdf
I believe your statement (“anyone not lawfully in the U.S. by definiton has committed a crime and is a criminal”) is incorrect. Please go to the link above for a fuller explanation.
And until this administration, and Stephen Miller, to my knowledge employees of ICE did not run around unidentified, wearing marks and sunglasses and gathering up people in the middle of the night, ziptying children, and establishing “camps” like Alligator Alcatraz and others. The cruelty seems to be the point.
Paid protesters? Nobody I know gets paid to stand up against the ugliness of the Trump regime. They do it for free, and for human rights. When things are that bad, and they are, we WILL and DO comment as loud as we can.
I comfess it always takes a bit of daring on my part to post comments critical of the current administration and its heavy-handed tactics. I’m a US citizen living in Canada. My wife (who’s Canadian) and I planning to cross the border next week for Thanksgiving. The discussion we’re currently having is whether or not we take our cellphones along for fear of our devices being seized and searched and our being denied entry because someone at CBP doesn’t like something we’ve posted or responded to.
Mr. Hiskes! Thank you.
Truly, I can hardly believe what is happening in the USA these days. As a Canadian I and most others I know, are shocked and appalled at the stories we hear coming from a Country we (used to) love and respect. Now, we wonder how it will continue to unravel into chaos and the destruction of all that was built up in the years past – imperfectly as is always true of broken humanity – but THIS, this has the smell of wickedness about it. May God have mercy.
Mr. Hiskes,
Thanks so much for telling this story, and for helping how you could to support Javier. My church is in some similar situations in Washington DC these days. Keep up the good fight!
Mr Hiskes,
My daughter enjoyed her time in your class at HCHS. Thank you for continuing to be the hands and feet of Jesus!
Thank you, Mark?
Thank you for using your storytelling to help us see some of the truth about what is happening here. Many of us grieve for what our country has become and how we now treat “the least of these”. May each of us also see where we can use our power and privilege to advocate for something different.
How can we, as a society, work to ensure that organizations like ICE are held accountable for their actions and prevented from inflicting further harm on vulnerable individuals?