CHARLOTTE — Calling for justice and opposing the federal government’s “shameful immigration policy that criminalizes children and families seeking safety,” religious leaders held a vigil at Myers Park Baptist Church Aug. 3.
The Rev. Ben Boswell, senior minister of Myers Park Baptist Church, said the vigil was meant to be “a witness to the moral crisis” and participants wanted to “shine a light on a humanitarian disaster,” “expose the human rights violations that take place in the centers of detention of ICE throughout the country” and “testify with truth what is happening today to the people in our country.”
Immigration lawyer Cynthia Aziz, a parishioner at St. Peter Church in Charlotte, spoke at the vigil, calling the decisions taken by federal immigration authorities “a shame all over the world.”
“Yes, our immigration laws are broken, but threatening Congress to act quickly with more inhuman activities with the people we have to help is wrong,” Aziz said.
Responding to some claims that the detention centers in which children separated from their parents have been housed are similar to “summer camps,” the lawyer said that as a Girl Scout she never saw a summer camp that was surrounded by barbed wire. “My parents would never have left me there crying, imploring to be with them. That is not the summer camp of my childhood.”
Chrissy Williamson, associate minister of Myers Park Baptist Church, said that as the mother of a 5-year-old girl, she cannot imagine her daughter being pulled out of her arms, “forced to live in a cage and presented in a court room alone, scared and without my protection.”
Williamson called on “all mothers, all parents, and all people of faith and good conscience to raise their voices” and make their elected officials feel that “we can and should do better for each and every one of our neighbors.”
The vigil was initially going to be held outside the federal immigration court in Charlotte but was moved inside the Baptist church due to inclement weather.
At the end of the vigil, the group traveled to the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Ga., where most deportees from Charlotte are sent before being deported. To get a better idea of the journey that immigrants and their families in detention detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), the vigil participants made the same trip that immigrants from their communities make when they are arrested and sent to Stewart.
On Aug. 4, showing signs that read “Justice for all,” “We are with you,” “On which side of history are you?”, “Wanting a better life is not a crime” and many others, 23 people from this interfaith group congregated outside the Stewart Detention Center where they activated a “prayer chain” calling for a solution to the immigration problem and singing hymns of hope.
— César Hurtado, Hispanic Reporter