Tacoma Detention Center Vigil: What do we do?
by Bryan Johns, CSJP-A
We unload.
We pull up in our trusty 1999 Honda Odyssey van, in the redlined no-parking zone, curbside and we unload. First the tables and chairs. The coffee and water. Next is the canopy that never seems to get any easier to setup, no matter how many times we do it. Out come the homemade cookies, the fresh fruit, the chips, the cheese sticks, the hot chocolate, the “gratis” signs, and the cups. On a separate table in front we stack the knitted hats, the stuffed animals, the coloring books, and the crayons. The final touch: the CSJP sign Sister Jo-Anne gave us years ago. We unload.
They come.
The visitors drive by, eyeing us, searching for a parking space, slowly emerging from their cars, gathering themselves and their loved ones. They come from everywhere: an all morning drive from Portland or Yakima, flying in from California or Alaska, coming from right next door. They walk by us in all different manners; serious, smiling, sad, apprehensive. Yet they all have two things in common: they wish they weren’t there, and they love the ones they came to visit. We tell them to come back and get something to eat, to have a good visit, to tell those inside that they are not forgotten. They come.
They wait.
They check in, load up the lockers, sit in a crowded room with a TV showing some inappropriate violent programming. The kids, crying or silent, first-timers in shock and others squeamish in their mother’s arms. Old people who don’t understand how this country they came to has changed so much. Lawyers preparing bad news for their clients, the limited options in this optionless world. Friends and lovers who are bracing themselves for their last goodbyes to the deported. On some days, they line up outside in the cold, next to a building that looks like any other in the industrial park, a first people’s tidal flat turned Superfund waste site, paved over and sold to the GEO corporation. All for holding detainees. And making people wait. And they wait.
They come out.
Relieved. Distraught. Dazed. Hurt. We jump into action, pleading for them to take something, that it’s for free, we don’t want to take all of this stuff home. We offer them something to drink, something to eat, something to wear, something to have. We give them goodie bags for the long trip home, we answer their questions, we give them a moment to collect themselves, we give them a bit of their humanity back. And we wait. Then some snap out of their daze and head for their cars. Some thank us and take some more. Some start to cry. And some share their stories. They come out.
They talk.
Siblings who visit their brother who will be sent back to a Somalia he never even remembers as a child, not knowing the language, no family, a death sentence in a war zone. A kindergartener seeing a psychologist to deal with the absence of her father from her life and his impending deportation to Mexico. A man whose wife will be deported to Cameroon, who had to quit his job, sell their things, live on a friend’s couch, hoping to save enough money to fly his infant daughter and himself to live in a land they don’t even know. A woman accompanied by a best friend and a minister who just married her incarcerated partner moments before, a happy and horrendous day, all at the same time. And a mother with children in tow who was told that she had missed her window of visitation and that she would have to come back tomorrow morning, now having to struggle to find a place to stay for the night. They talk.
And then, what do we do?
What can we do in the face of such helplessness and hopelessness?
We love.
We love the people we serve, and we love those who walk on by. We love those inside. We love the officers at the facility, the lawyers, the ICE agents, the peace activists, the government. We love the masses that flow across the arbitrary borders of this world and we love the forces who try to stop them. We love God and we love the arc of justice that bends down to us. Why do we do this? We love.
As of March 2020, our CSG has not made vigils since visits by families and friends to the Tacoma Detention Center have been restricted. We ask that the CSJP community continue to pray for all involved in this horrible ongoing tragedy. Also, we ask you to contact Advocates for Immigrants in Detention Northwest (https://aidnw.org) if you wish to make contributions to help those detainees that are released.
This article appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Living Peace.