About a month
ago, I watched the SAPD stop a woman in front of our house. He was busy on his radio, and she was
removing the third clear trash bag full of cans from the back seat while she
balanced her toddler on her hip.
Soon the tow truck arrived, and I watched her abandon the cans in favor
of the car seat as she carried her child toward the bus stop. Without a license or insurance she’ll
never see her car again. It could
have been much worse.
Had she been
deported, after a legal wrangle, she could well have ended up in Tamulipas, the
US' current favorite destination.
As bad as things are in Mexico, they are much worse in Tamulipas
State. From Stratfor: In the past
few months, Tamaulipas state experienced a sharp increase in homicides -- from
87 reported in August to 128 in September, according to Mexico's Executive
Secretariat of the National System of Public Security. Military operations
often lead to violence in Tamaulipas state, but the state
is also experiencing a turf war involving Los Zetas, the Gulf cartel
and a Los Zetas splinter group led by Ivan "El Taliban" Velazquez
Caballero until his recent arrest. These dynamics are likely behind the state's reported
increase in violence.
The LA Times reports that deportees arriving in Tamulipas are often
searched for phone numbers with US area codes. Such discoveries often occasion “secuestros” or kidnappings
in which deportees are held until US relatives pay a ransom. Since an obvious ploy is to transpose
the area code for a Mexican one, the ploy doesn’t work, and a deportees only
recourse is often to pay protection, just to leave the bus station in safety. What happens to women in
such circumstances in unthinkable.
We have often participated in discussions and
movements to counter the traffic leading to involuntary sex slavery.
It’s a tragedy that an uncounted majority of such
crimes are engendered at the service of saving American tax dollars and serving
American domestic policy. Sending
waiters, mechanics and homemakers into harm’s way because we’re done with them
is the most vile shortcoming of our Bishop’s political agenda.
We have consistently demonstrated a willingness
to spend millions in order to determine how and with whom Protestants conduct
marriage ceremonies. I remind you
there has never been a “gay” Catholic marriage.
What we have, however, is a virtually unbroken silence
when our co-religionists are delivered into the hands of kidnappers and rapists
and murderers.
