Faith leaders head protests against treatment of migrants at Moral Monday in El Paso

Hundreds of clergy from various faiths from across the nation prayed, sang and marched Monday outside an El Paso immigration center.

The demonstration was part of the national "Moral Monday" movement, which opposes on moral and religious grounds what demonstrators say are unjust U.S. immigration policies.

About 500 marched outside the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement processing center and a U.S. Border Patrol facility on Montana Avenue near Hawkins Boulevard.

The multi-faith, multiracial movement headed by the Rev. William J. Barber II and other faith leaders seeks to address poverty, racism and inequality.

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Barber is a Protestant minister and social justice activist from North Carolina with a large build and a booming preacher's voice. A few years ago, he began the New Poor People's Campaign calling for a national moral revival.

The protest began on a vacant field next to the ICE center, where the El Paso-based immigrant rights group Border Network for Human Rights held banners and chanted before the arrival of several buses and vans with the out-of-town clergy.

'All this is connected'

“We see all of this connected," Barber said. "The same forces that are caging mothers and fathers and children and making people drink out of toilets ...  are suppressing the vote in this country."

"The same forces are denying living wages and denying health care and denying ecological justice," Barber said. "The same forces are pushing a faulty theological position that says as long as you are against gay people, against women and for guns and for prayer in the school and for tax cuts that is a godly way.

"The same people against these the (immigrant) people here are pushing a war economy," Barber said his voice rising. "We see all these interlocking injustices and we are raising a moral inter-sectional fusion movement against it. All of us, every color, every race, every creed, every sexuality. We are very clear.”

'Moral Monday'

"Fight ignorance, not immigrants" stated a banner as Border Network protesters shouted various chants including "El pueblo callado jamás será escuchado," meaning "quiet people will never be heard."

Barber's movement supports the Border Network for Human Rights demands for congressional hearings at the border, an end to migrant family and child detentions and an end to the "Remain in Mexico" policy that returns asylum seekers to Mexico while waiting for U.S. immigration court hearings.

Marchers walked a block before the crowd temporally blocked Mattox Street and an entrance to the Border Patrol site.

At a closed metal gate, Barber and others prayed for the detained immigrants, including a group of Indian detainees on a hunger strike.

"They are not numbers. They have names. They have stories. Their stories are our story," said Imam Omar Suleiman of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and an Islamic studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Some clergy made comparisons to the biblical stories about welcoming strangers who could be angels. "You are holding angels in this place, but you can't hold them forever," a reverend said.

After the arrival of a half-dozen El Paso police officers, demonstrators got on the sidewalks and opened the street.

"I just can't handle that children are dying in custody," protester Stephanie Drury, 44, of the Vineyard Christian community in Seattle, said about her reason to come to El Paso.

"It makes everything more real," Drury said of her trip to the border. "It's eyeopening to see what's happening. You can't turn off the news and distract yourself and pretend it's not happening."

Our humanity on trial

On Sunday, Barber and other clergy met with migrants at a Juárez shelter impacted by the Migrant Protection Protocols, the formal name of the policy known as "Remain in Mexico" that forces migrants to stay in Mexico while waiting for their asylum hearing.

Barber spoke about meeting a child about 5-years-old who is a U.S. citizen but is having to stay in Mexico with his mother because she is undocumented,

On Sunday night, there was a mass meeting that packed First Christian Church, 901 Arizona Ave.

"Verses from the Bible and the Koran have too often been used to hurt rather than uplift," Suleiman said at the Sunday gathering, explaining that Jesus, Abraham and Moses are also part of the Muslim faith

"If you say that Jesus is in your heart, but you would put him in a cage today, you are a hypocrite," Suleiman said. "If you say that you believe in Moses, but you would let him drown, you are a hypocrite.

"If you say you that believe in Abraham, and that you are following in the footsteps of Abraham, but you would turn him away from these borders, you are a hypocrite."

"It is not the humanity of these people that’s on trial, it is our humanity," Suleiman said.

Moral Monday at the Borderlands was organized by various groups, including Repairers of the Breach, Border Network for Human Rights, Define American, Religious Action Center, Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and Union for Reform Judaism.

Daniel Borunda may be reached at 546-6102; dborunda@elpasotimes.com; @BorundaDaniel on Twitter.

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