Breaking the ice

For too long, I let Donald Trump's false, harsh rhetoric sour my response to immigrants. Finally, on a bone-chilling day, I came face-to-face with a mother, her infant--and my own heartlessness.

Walking out of the Trader Joe's around high noon recently, I’m tempted to walk briskly to my car.

I’m on a work break and it’s 10 degrees--strong motivators to keep moving. But something I've seen on the way into the store has taken hold of my mind: a woman, almost certainly an immigrant, standing near the entrance.

In her hands is a little red basket, a row of peanut M & Ms and Snickers bars neatly arrayed. She’s open for business.

Swaddled snugly over her right shoulder is a tiny child, eyes squeezed as firmly shut as mine have been the past few years as I stride past these...these, what?

Moments? Situations? Scenes?

No, people.

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Supporting people who are in need is one of my foremost core values—for nearly 30 years, my wife and I have consistently done so in ways that align with our Christian faith and our general sense of care and compassion.

But for some reason, I've been walking past this particular group of people (immigrants) without a word, without a look, and without very much thought. Why is that?

For sure, my petty selfishness is a factor—what happened to the good old days of walking down the street and not being reminded of all these people in desperate straits?

But reflecting more deeply, what looms at the root of my self-entitled impatience is exasperation with both Democrats and Republicans stumbling repeatedly in addressing immigration. And what’s really gotten to me is President Trump’s dehumanization of the men, women and children coming to the U.S.

For years, the man who has married two women from foreign countries has painted this diverse group with vicious, false brush strokes. The Marshall Project, which conducts nonprofit journalism about criminal justice, has fact-checked over 12,000 of Trump’s statements about immigration.

As noted on The Marshall Project’s home page:

Repetition has been core to Trump’s speech throughout his political career. The Marshall Project used text analysis to identify 13 major claims about immigration in over 350,000 of Trump’s public statements from Factba.se, some of which Trump has made 500 times or more. All of them are untrue or deeply misleading.

Research has shown that as someone hears a statement more times, it feels more true.

I have never believed Trump’s shameless and flagrant lies on this issue. But, to my shame, I have allowed his poisonous words to infect my heart toward immigrants themselves.

The past few years, since the likes of Texas Governor Greg Abbott have shuttled over 50,000 immigrants to Chicago, encounters with these faces of our broken national immigration policy have made me uncomfortable, even resentful.

Their perpetual presence challenges my sense of responsibility in these moments. Aren't my taxes already going toward helping these folks with the necessities--shelter, clothing, food? What else am I supposed to do? Pay an exorbitant price for a candy bar that I shouldn't eat in the first place?

Rather than wrestle with the messy questions, I've averted my eyes—really seeing them, after all, would foil my cold-shoulder strategy. It’s all come at a mounting cost: Bit by bit, a piece of my humanity and compassion has eroded every time I act like these souls are invisible.

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Outside that Trader Joe’s, though, I simply can’t muster the heartlessness to do that again. Getting a closer look at her baby--a boy, I think--I’m stunned by his wee-ness.

“How old is he?” I ask.

She smiles and shakes her head. A few rounds of my limited Spanish and her limited English ensue. Somehow, through my gestures and a mangled attempt at the Spanish words for various months—I summon "Octobre" from my dusty French—she figures out what I’m asking.

"Agosto!" she declares.

This baby shares the same birth month, possibly even the same birthday, with my twin children.¹

I hand over a $2 bill, grab a Snickers bar and tell her, “God bless you.”

The transaction is beside the point. On this brutally cold day and looking to future occasions when immigrants cross my path, it’s all about the human interaction.

At long last, I’ve broken the ice.

1. Had the baby been born in the U.S.? Very possibly, even likely, which brings to mind the birthright citizenship that President Trump now wants to eradicate.