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No Safe Place to Land
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Sometimes you can’t close your eyes. You can’t look away. You get fixated on what you see, and when you close your eyes after a long day at work, you see it happen all over again. You see grown men in uniforms pushing exhausted little children back into the Rio Grande River so that they can, what, float back to Mexico?
In an email to his boss, paramedic and Texas State trooper Nicholas Wingate complained he was ordered to push migrants who emerged from the river exhausted with life-threatening injuries back into the water where they would likely drown.
Still believing in the mission to “secure the border from bad people”, Wingate wrote, “I believe we have stepped over a line. We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such.”
Mexican migrant workers have been recruited to fill our nation’s cheap labor gap and expand the fortunes of American business since World War II. Official immigration policies aside, businesses today actively recruit, hire, and profit from illegal border crossings. Mexicans on the other side of the Rio Grande risk their lives knowing jobs await them and believing they will find a safe place to land.
But no safe place exists here for the majority who cross. Instead, like fish, they get hooked on brutal razor wire. If they’re lucky, a state trooper with a moral conscience might help cut them out of their bind. But most follow the order to look the other way. If migrants make it out of the water, there will be other troopers ready to shove them off a shore that until 1848 was part of their own homeland—without a meal or consideration for their wellbeing. This is inhumane, unwarranted, reprehensible, and evil.
If this is the new and greater America Greg Abbott and others of his ilk envision, let’s remember Goya’s vision expressed through this caption on his painting "The sleep of reason produces monsters.”
To all those who will continue to brave the waters of the Rio Grande, I dedicate this beautiful song.
Present Valley
This story and song made me weep...it's a lot to take in. While there is a part of me that cannot believe one human can treat another human this way I know it is real.
Whether having "no safe place to land" is something happening at the Rio Grande or in our personal lives it leaves one feeling desperate, powerless and heartsick. At least that was my experience when I had no safe place to land.
While I know I can't help people at the border I can keep a watchful eye out for the people in my sphere of influence in the event I can reach a hand out to them.
This is such a timely reminder to open our hearts and be that safe place. Thank you for sharing this.
Evangel
Beautifully, beautifully said–❤️
Slipstream
How can a person face going to work let alone showing up and doing this horrible, inhumane job? Bless Mr. Wingate for speaking up. He'll probably lose his job.
Evangel
I hope not. All the way around this is hypocrisy from a governor that preaches about an infant's "right to life".
Well Street
Bless Nicholas Wingate for having the courage to speak out against the heartless and inhumane actions being carried out and bringing them to the public's attention.
I agree with Present Valley's perspective that it's never been more important to keep our hearts open and be that safe place for others.
Evangel
True. In allowing his conscience to rule, Mr. Wingate spoke truth to power, triggering federal action now against the state of Texas for its illegal, inhumane treatment of migrants.