In this issue

• Basil

• Rosemary

• Chrysostom

• Salvadorian mega-prisons

• Ringed & Green Kingfishers

• Shimmery guitar tones for former roommates

The bad, good news for oppressors

Deportation-happy America vs. early Christian bishops

When I launched this newsletter a couple of years ago, I promised, among other things, “preachy penal reform pieces.” (And I also promised “metaphysical mad libs.” I’m still working on that one). There is no shortage of awful injustice in the world or of just causes to take up; Gaza is particularly in my prayers these days. But I don’t intend this to be a current events newsletter—journalists can do that. No one needs another opinion piece. In the case of the Trump administration’s acceleration of aggressive detentions and deportations at the hands of ICE, however, I might have some particular insight from my experience from several years of working with undocumented folks in Washington State. This was a current event some months ago when I started writing this column, but it is no less now.

I. Deportation and Escalation

In the distant reaches of January, 2025, the Episcopalian bishop of Washington DC, Rev. Marian Budde Dignity, gave a sermon at a national prayer service shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration. The sermon was brief, about seeking unity through honouring people’s dignity, pursuing honesty, and acting humbly. She concluded with a plea for the president to think of transgender youth and undocumented immigrant families. Here is a selection on the latter:

I’ll skip debates about gender identity (probably you will never see me wade into that kind of culture war issue), but I absolutely have things to say about the deportation of undocumented immigrants. For three years I worked in a family support centre in a small Washington town, primarily serving farmworker families who were Indigenous Mexicans. I visited people in spare workers’ cabins on farms; I accompanied people to local county court appointments and to immigration court in Seattle; I worshiped and prayed with people; I ate tortillas, beans, chilies and cilantro in dark apartments; I listened to stories about picking berries in the summer heat and digging clams in mudflats in winter; I joined groups meeting with lawmakers about immigration policies.

 I did this work during the Obama administration, when activists called the president the “Deporter-in-chief” because of the ruthless immigration enforcement. The going norm was often to “deport dad,” leaving broken families behind. At one meeting of community agencies with a Democratic senator’s staff, one clergy activist stormed out of the room, saying that choosing between the two parties was like choosing Bud or Bud Light. A cowboy-hatted older Mexican man nodded and said, “Necisitamos Corona.”

When some temporary legal reprieve was granted with DACA, I helped folks translate birth certificates for their applications. But I also saw people withhold applications for fear of being targeted for deportation by a future Republican administration (at the time, I remember one man being very nervous about a potential Romney presidency).

When in the 2016 election, after I had already moved (a second time) to Canada, I heard the ramped-up rhetoric about illegal immigrants, I had faces of friends and acquaintances in my mind. Their potential deportation was personal. The first Trump administration turned out to have more chaotic enforcement and deportation that didn’t result in the kind of mass deportations I feared, but I was still horrified by the cruel family separations at the border (continued in a modified way under Biden, I might add). But I can’t count on haphazard immigration policy this time around, with a militarized border, large-scale roundups, revoked legal refugee statuses, the targeting of activists and journalists, and detention camps that include Guantanamo Bay.  

Immigrants who crossed into the United States illegally can be treated and arrested in some cases (the legality of enforcing immigration law is complex). But here is the problem: a large section of American society sees them first as lawbreakers—“illegals”—and not as people in refugee situations. When I complained to a Canadian coworker about the increased deportations of undocumented immigrants (in 2016), he simply asked, “What’s wrong with that?”

I think this betrays a facile view of law and morality (legal=good, illegal=bad) that is prevalent but flawed. Not many people really believe this in practice. Obviously, don’t go committing murder or driving recklessly. But who hasn’t watched a TV show where spies carry around multiple fake passports and (in a plot twist) are forced to fight against the corrupt agency they are supposed to represent? What church hasn’t supported and prayed for missionaries who go into a restricted country illegally? If security and humanitarian aid and spreading the gospel are reasons some people see to disregard the law, why would escaping violence or keeping one’s family from dire poverty be any different?

Anyway, the American (and to a smaller extent Canadian) governments bear historic responsibility for, among other things, supporting military dictatorships and paramilitaries, Mexican government land seizures during NAFTA negotiations, sanctions that mainly affect Venezuela’s poor, and the exportation (through deportation) of US prison gangs to the streets of Tegucigalpa and Guatemala City. American drug users keep Mexican cartels profitable while American gun sellers keep them powerful.

If these humanitarian crises are partly of America’s making, realistic legal paths for immigration are out of reach for the victims. The process is difficult, near impossible, even for middle class Mexicans with families legally in the US to immigrate. I know stories of people whose reasonable and legitimate applications were denied. Imagine someone whose first language is Mixtec and has barely any Spanish trying to access an immigration lawyer from a small village in Oaxaca during a food shortage. I knew many such people in Washington, and only a few were able to obtain some kind of legal status.

There’s a kind of romantic American liberal view of the poor Mexican crossing the Rio Grande into an American promised land that is sort of a softer converse of the conservative “build the wall” rhetoric. Take, for example, Bruce Springsteen’s “Across the Border”:

The Latino and Indigenous immigrants I knew never had such illusions; America was a land of inescapable uncertainty and relentless labour. I heard people talk with longing about their homes in Mexico and Central America. One colleague would listen to a popular song in Oaxaca called “Volver” (Return). Being in the US was merely a matter of survival.

During my work with undocumented folks, I was reading a lot of Christian community development literature (John Perkins and Bob Lupton were particular influences). These writers emphasized the work of community empowerment, local economic ownership, and building capacity of people in poor neighbourhoods. I learned how such work was very difficult among migrant farmworkers who work in California in the winter and Washington in the summer, and who live under the constant threat of deportation. There was not much of a permanent community at all (though I understand this has since changed in the area). The only solutions for some kind of stability were political and federal: some sort of path to citizenship or legal status. It was at this time that I, who had an Anabaptist skepticism toward government participation, voted for the first time.

As far as I know, no one reading this is a lawmaker, so I’m not here to make policy recommendations (though some friends and acquaintances have worked for a few different Canadian political parties in the past, so, you know, if you have someone’s ear consider telling your MPs and party leaders not to be heartless tyrants... more on that below). But I do want to make the case for seeing undocumented folks as people, whose complex but real suffering and insecurity should be met with compassion and understanding.

Detentions and deportations have accelerated in the past few months, and with them egregious abuses. I’ve had to scan both news sites and updates from advocacy organizations to start to get a sense of the scope. It is evil. And the spectacle of cruelty seems to be part of the point.

So far, those detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have included:

• Latino farmworkers picked up in raids, including US citizens and those with legal immigration status  

• Legal refugees, including those in the US to escape religious and political persecution

• Legal Venezuelan refugees, whose status was rescinded

• European tourists

• Canadian visitors

• Academics on work visas

• Touring UK punk bands

• College students

• Professional soccer players

• Evangelical worship pastors

• Activists with PR status

• Toddlers and kids

• Lots of people of colour regardless of their citizenship or immigration status, especially, but not exclusively, Latinos.

In many cases, unidentified, masked plainclothes ICE officers have arrested and detained people for days without the ability to contact their families (a move that sounds like the KGB). There have been other allegations of torture: victims being stripped and starved, piled into cramped rooms with fluorescent lights on for 24 hours a day, and, yes, sent to Guantanamo Bay. One of the most publicized stories is probably the several planeloads of mostly Venezuelans (accused without evidence of being gang members, not that gang members should be denied due process) being sent to El Salvador, without hearings in court, to work prisons (and against US court orders). I don’t see how that is anything but targeting political enemies for slavery.

If crossing a border without authorization is illegal (of the misdemeanor variety), these ICE actions are much more so: illegal and deeply immoral abuses committed under the veneer of “upholding the law.” “Deportation” is really the wrong term. Being dumped in Tijuana or flown to Managua is nothing to being unjustly sentenced to 20 years in a Salvadorian work camp or being sent back to a country where you are in mortal danger from religious persecution. Rather, ICE has turned into something like the enforcement arm of an autocratic leader’s whims, or simply the whims of individual officers.

The many lawsuits against the federal government (including one filed by the US Catholic Bishops, in keeping with the theme), have not resulted in many substantive changes.

I will just link to three stories from a few months ago that tell a slice of the larger story. 

Here is a local Miami news report about conditions in an overcrowded immigration detention centre, where inmates are being denied food and water and medical care. Some have died.

Christianity Today ran a piece about the chilling effect of ICE raids on Latino churches, whose members and leaders are disappearing, while those left are staying home in fear.

And you can hear a story by a Maine man of one of his detained neighbours and the impact on the family left behind.

II. Bishop takes King

Returning to the Episcopalian bishop’s January homily, she went the way of gentleness, trying win over Trump and Vance by appealing to their compassion. Judging from their thin-skinned overreaction, you’d think she had threatened their families, not just asked for some understanding (Make America Hypersensitive Again?). If the respectful approach didn’t work, there is an alternative. Christian bishops of the past have been more direct and even menacing to the rich and powerful.

I think of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, who confronted the emperor Theodosius around the year 390. On hearing that Theodosius slaughtered 7,000 men, women and children in anger in Thessalonica, the bishop sent the emperor an angry and pleading letter. “There was that done in the city of the Thessalonians of which no similar record exists,” Ambrose exclaims. He writes that he wishes that the emperor had listened to his and others’ requests for mercy. Instead, Ambrose chides Theodosius’

In the letter, Ambrose pleads for a change of heart. After consulting other bishops, Ambrose barred the emperor from entering a church or receiving the Eucharist and instituted an eight-month penance.

Confronting the oppressive and powerful was practically a pastime for early Christian bishops. St. John Chrysostom famously preached hellfire sermons against the rich. In a series of homilies about the gospel parable of the rich man and Lazarus, John Chrysostom is unsparing in his descriptions of the horrors that the rich afflict on the poor, and the horrors that await the rich in judgement. See this passage about “the rich and greedy”:

If you would like to read four sermons of the same sort of stuff, read the translated collection On Wealth and Poverty. (An aside: Chrysostom’s view of the eternity of hell and judgement was not universally shared in the early church—a topic for another time, perhaps. But it is no coincidence that the fiercest imagery of fiery judgement in the Bible and Christian tradition are reserved for the powerful).

While bishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom earned the ire of emperor Arcadius’ wife Aelia Eudoxia, who considered his denunciations of wealth and extravagance a personal affront (speaking of hypersensitive overreactions). When she temporarily exiled him from the city, riots ensued.

Consider also St. Basil of Caesarea (“The Great”). What was so great about St. Basil? Among many other things, his great love for the poor (which included creating early hospitals) and his clear denunciation of oppression and wealth. His ruminations on the danger of wealth and the contagion of greed could be lifted from The Communist Manifesto (if you replace “greed” or “the rich” with “capital” or “the bourgeoisie”): “Nothing withstands the influence of wealth. Everything submits to its tyranny, and everything cowers at its dominion.” (St Basil the Great, “To the Rich,” in On Social Justice).

Like Chrysostom, he warns the rich to remember the judgment to come: “What will you say in your own defense, when all around you stand those whom you have treated unjustly, denouncing you before the righteous Judge?... Wherever you turn your gaze, you will clearly behold the apparitions of your evil acts: here the tears of the orphan, there the groaning of the widow, elsewhere the poor whom you have treated outrageously. All your deeds will rise up before you; the wicked chorus of the wrongdoings will beset you on all sides.”

Basil also preached against lending at interest and hoarding food during famine. His concern is not just to denounce the rich, and not just to save their souls after death, but to set them free from the cares and anxieties of greed and injustice. “But you! You keep everything locked up and securely fastened with gates and bars. You like awake at night with worry, taking counsel with yourself (and having recourse to a most foolish counselor at that!). “What should I do?” How easily you might have said, “I will satisfy the souls of the hungry, I will throw open the gates of my barns and summon all those in need.” (St. Basil, “I Will Tear Down my Barns,” On Social Justice).

Let me jump some centuries ahead to the Salvadorian Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero who was while serving liturgy under a brutal military junta in 1980. Like Basil, his harsh words against the acts of injustice were truly spoken in love for the oppressors themselves. In addressing the leaders and death squad soldiers committing atrocities across El Salvador, he entreated them: “Dear brothers and sisters… you that have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice – be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way of ruin” (The Violence of Love).

(Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist and young father who was detained by ICE in March, wrote similar sentiments while imprisoned: “I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.”)

I’ve been dipping broadly into 80s music recently, and I came across a wonderfully snotty and concise punk song by Reagan Youth. The lyrics: “Jesus was a communist / Jesus was a pacifist / Jesus was a communist / Jesus didn’t like the rich.”

Far be it for me to criticize teenage punk hermeneutics. But it’s not necessarily that Jesus did not like the rich (though there are snide remarks about “those who wear soft clothing… in king’s palaces”). Rather, he sought to save them from their way of destruction. His love is quite explicit in the story of the rich young ruler who had tried to keep God’s commandments: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money  to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me’” (Mark 10: 21).

Contrast this truth and love approach with the platitudes of the type of partisan religious leaders who do little more than encourage and bolster leaders in their own narrow perspectives and their acts of injustice. (I have in mind the pastors and religious rhetoricians of the Trumpy version of the American Republican party, but there are party pastors and priests of many types in this world).

I’d rather not name names, but I have read and heard no shortage of weird contortions of Christianity used to justify cruelty and aggression. Maybe the silliest example was from a Liberty University administrator who said on the news that US tariffs against Canada were justified based on the golden rule: “What people do to us, we will do to them.” (Hint: this is not the golden rule). Every time I hear one of these gospel contortions, I suspect that the partisan religious leaders who only offer blessing and encouragement cannot actually love Donald Trump and those around him if they are silent in the face of injustice, and never speak any words about judgement, never call leaders to repentance. The Bible has a term for those preaching peace where there is no peace: false prophet. 

Scriptures and Christian tradition are quite repetitive in judgment against unjust violence, greedy gain, oppression of the poor, and neglect of the needy. Keeping message of judgment against those who do such things back from the powerful is either woefully mistaken, cynically calculated, or cowardly.

III. Weep and Howl

So if you’re a bishop one day (or anyone else, really) and are invited to address a group of government officials or weapons manufacturers or investment bankers or Fortune 500 CEOs or generals or US Immigration Customs Enforcement officers or Kristi Noem or Marco Rubio or a private prison company worker retreat, here are just a small few representative snippets from the Christian tradition that you can use (completely free!).

Those whose version of Christianity has room for kidnapping, torture, human trafficking, and breaking up families, under whatever guise of legality, may be able to muster (unconvincing) arguments that fit government-sanctioned cruelty into an ideology of honouring government authority, or of conserving values, or of some grandiose mission of saving Western civilization. They may even be able to draw on parts of Christian tradition to try to make their case. But embracing violent oppression invariably means rejecting Christ.

St. Maria of Paris, the Orthodox nun and champion of the poor who died in a German concentration camp, and had been arrested for her efforts to protect Jews from another kind of “deportation,” summarized a famous passage in Matthew where Jesus identifies himself with those suffering.

IV. Epilogue: Victor and many others

This summer, ten plainclothes ICE agents in black balaclavas surrounded and apprehended Victor Vivanco while he was working at his landscaping job near Mount Vernon, Washington.

Victor is a father with young children who has legal immigration status in the US. Because of a youth crime record, he had been working with my former colleague Chris Hoke at Underground Ministries for support as he got a driver’s license, found work to support his young family, and sought support for family counseling. (Some of you may know of Chris from Tierra Nueva, because his book Wanted, or maybe heard him on a few NPR radio appearances).

From Chris:

ICE agents added to the apprehension dubious charges of vehicular assault, because their vehicles crashed into the landscaping equipment trailer. You can read Chris’s report here, and donate to his legal help fund if so inclined.

As violent ICE apprehensions accelerate with new boldness with increased federal funding and recruitment of agents, I expect to hear more stories like this from my old community in Washington and throughout the US. As of earlier this summer, 59,000 people are detained in overcrowded detention centres, private prisons, and squalid camps.

If you’re in the US, finding local immigration aid organizations can offer some of the best information. If you have the means, there are thousands of families like Victor’s in need of support. If you have the ear of someone in power, do not be sparing in your rebuke.

Birds at the Border

A Rio Grande Valley wildlife trip

There were dozens of government trucks and SUVs from federal and state agencies in a crowded parking lot at a bend in the Rio Grande River. My friend and I walked out onto a dock. I asked a Department of Fish and Wildlife officer parking a boat if he was out patrolling for illegal fishing or hunting. “Nope,” he said. “Is this an immigration thing?” “Yep.”

My friend and I were walking around a park what was recently a holding camp for detained migrants during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. But we were here on the south side of “the wall” for a kingfisher.

The Ringed Kingfisher, the gigantic cousin of the ubiquitous Belted Kingfisher, was one of many bird species that come no farther north in the US than this small muddy river valley (I was expecting the Columbia or something, but this “Grande” river is more of a brown slough). We were there for a week in the winter of 2022 to find those birds.

Over that week we birded from the coastal tourist beaches on South Padre Island, through the border towns of Brownsville and Hidalgo, in tropical state parks and wildlife preserves on the south side of the militarized border wall, upriver to nearly desert habitat, and in parks around San Antonio (I briefly glimpsed the Alamo) looking for Great Kiskadees, Green Kingfishers, Northern Beardless Tyrannulets (check, check, check) and many other species. We ate enormous cheap burritos. And of course I was imagining the many migrants crossing while we watched White-tailed Kites hunt just across the river on the Mexican side.

Thanks to eBird’s trip report feature, you can see the places we stopped and our list of birds in our report. Since the previous column was so long, I offer just a few pictures here.

A Free Music Curator for You

It’s me!

I find myself wanting to write almost exclusively about music these days, which I partially credit to the one ear bud I keep in while working my part-time elementary school janitor job. Along with my commute, and newly repaired car speakers, I spend a lot of time immersed in music. So you can expect more of this in my newsletter.

But to give this a more personal touch, I’ve decided to target unsuspecting readers with their own personal playlist recommendations.

My first target: my former roomate with the slight English accent, Craig Ketchum. Craig and I spent a lot of time together at the same school, church, and house, and a lot of that time was music-focused. He grew up between the UK and a couple of different countries in east Africa, so in those days in the 2000s he was catching up all at once on years of music that he might have missed. He might be getting into Dave Matthews Band and Joni Mitchell and Phoenix and Nas at the same time. We bonded over the music of Jeremy Enigk (of Sunny Day Real Estate and The Fire Theft) and a lot more. (Craig almost ruined Enigk’s song “Been Here Before” for me by playing it every day, but you can’t keep a great song down).

One day I aim to fulfill my dream of pushing him into Ketchum Lake, Washington, or at least walking the streets of Ketchum, Idaho with him. Maybe we can start a biker gang in retirement. In the meantime, I made him a playlist.

Craig makes his own pretty guitar instrumentals in the spirit of some of the mellower, 2000s noodly guitar post-rock. He may not know it yet, but a lot of that sound and style comes from people trying to imitate the first album by second-wave emo luminaries American Football in 1999. So I’ve included their classic opening track. There are several other instrumentals and emo/“regular indie” slow builds of that and other eras, but also cool classics, rocking tunes, smooth hip hop jams, haunting jazz, CBC radio 2-style feel-good songs, pretty folk voices, and recent releases. So, Craig, let me know how this music lands on your ears.

Here is the link to the playlist on Apple Music. (You can look for simple websites to copy it to other streaming services if you need).

Next time, this could be you!

Do you want some new music in your life? Something to dance to? Something to relax to? Have you always wanted to get into post-punk or 90s hip hop or second-wave ska or art pop, but don’t have the time to wade through things? I can do the work for you. Or do you just want to listen to things I think are cool? I’ll take volunteers.

Stuff of the issue

• Onomatopoeia: Pat

• Bird insult: Sandwich Tern

• Book: Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

• Highbrow takedown: “Mozart died too late rather than too early” - Glenn Gould, 1968

• Lichenized fungus: Fan Pelt Lichen (Peltigera venosa)

• Song: Aimee Man - “The Fall of the World’s Own Optimist”

• Birding hotspot: Mount Thompson Forest Service Road, Creston, BC

-Paul