The bleak midwinter: coping with immigration insecurity

Intermountain Catholic

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After distributing over 600 gifts, Diocesan director of Hispanic ministry Maria-Cruz Gray speaks with Fr. Clarence Sandoval, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish. IC photos by Christopher Gray

HYDE PARK — The details of a recent immigration raid in Cache Valley are now a matter of history. On Dec. 12, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers executed civil search warrants at six facilities owned by Swift & Company, including one meat packing plant in Hyrum.

Dec. 12 is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a day of special importance to many Hispanic Americans.

According to the ICE, the operation was part of a worksite enforcement investigation that had identified a large identity theft scheme. The civil warrants allowed ICE agents to search for and apprehend any illegal alien workers encountered at the facilities.

This description, however, does not begin to address the humanitarian toll. Families were torn apart and an intense dread spread among immigrant workers. At St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church just north of Logan, Father Clarence Sandoval has seen and ministered to the fallout of this action.

"The raid did not only impact the Spanish-speaking community. It affected all of St. Thomas Parish, all of Cache Valley. You can begin to see the humanity, the human side of this. You can’t refuse to see it. These are not criminals who were put in buses, these are just workers. We are faced with many questions, and not many answers on what to do," said Fr. Sandoval in a Jan. 7 interview with the Intermountain Catholic.

Through December and now into the new year, Fr. Sandoval’s parish has been working with the people immediately affected by the raid: husbands who have been separated from their wives, wives who have been separated from their husbands, and children who no longer trust to see their parents again after leaving for school. The community needs information, he said. And as time wears on, some are finding their financial situations – and their clothing, housing, and food situations – becoming unstable.

For many families who lost a member, the solution will be to return speedily to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, or somewhere else where they can live together.

In those cases where children were born in the United States, The situation of citizenship rises again. "If a parent is being deported, and if they have children, we have to educate the parent – or in some cases the caregiver – to get passports for the children. Some children don’t have birth certificates. For those parents who have been sent to Florence, Ariz., we have been able to fax paperwork to a religious sister who has been working with us to then get a signature from the parent. With the faxed signature, we can take the form to the post office to start the passport

application.

"In some cases, the parent still here is selling off everything, giving all their things away to get back to Mexico. For many of these children they don’t know anything in life but Logan. They’ve never been to Mexico, to El Salvador, to Guatemala, or to wherever their parents are from. It will be a drastic change for them."

Fr. Sandoval continued, "I went to visit a family. The father had just spoken to his wife in Park City, who will be deported. They have five children. At night, his children are so afraid that they sleep with him. These children are 15, 13, and 12 years old. One night he heard his nine-year-old daughter crying. Going to her, he found her asleep; she was crying in her sleep from the trauma and the exhaustion."

Fr. Sandoval has received e-mails and letters questioning him for his ministry to the community and accusing him of aiding criminals. Even so, Fr. Sandoval has found the community in his parish and in Cache Valley in general to have been helpful and very generous.

In some western cultures, including the Hispanic tradition, gifts are exchanged on the Solemnity of the Epiphany to coincide with the story of the Magi from the Gospel of Matthew. Through the Diocesan Office of Hispanic Ministry, youth groups from St. Francis Xavier Parish in Kearns, St. Therese of the Child Jesus Parish in Midvale, Saints Peter and Paul Parish in West Valley City, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Salt Lake City, and St. Joseph Parish in Ogden collected and brought approximately 600 toys and other gifts to give to hundreds of children at St. Thomas Church Jan. 7.

Maria-Cruz Gray, director of Hispanic ministry for the Diocese of Salt Lake City, said "This is the faith community trying to reach the children and share with them our love and all the blessings we have been given, regardless of social status."

According to Fr. Sandoval, "It must be emphasized that we have people here with us with a different culture, with different customs, with a different language. They are human beings, and all they want is work and to take care of their families. The majority of the people coming across the border are poor. We have to ask each other as Americans to find ways to help each other. Until then, we aren’t doing anything, we’re just putting up laws. We’re not seeing the reality of what is taking place."