Photo by Jim Burklo
USC Students Border Trek
Students from the University of Southern California trekked to the U.S.-Mexico border to observe conditions firsthand, including the actions of immigrant-friendly churches and U.S. government agents.
It is no longer paranoid fantasy to say that we are being watched all the time.
GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) are literally studying our every move. These corporate black holes, concentrating capital and power through their monopolistic legacy positions, silently observe our physical movements, purchases, clicks, and fine-grained preferences. Cambridge Analytica watched us during the last election cycle, snatching personal data about us from Facebook and targeting misleading messages to vulnerable subgroups for the benefit the Trump campaign. Russia's ruling kleptocracy is watching us, refining strategies to manipulate our elections. The US government is watching us, sampling our mobile phone conversations, internet activity, and even our facial expressions in airports and other public places.
I'm just back from the US/Mexico border, where I take USC students every year on an exploration of immigrant justice issues. Several times we passed through the checkpoints set up by "migra", the US Border Patrol. As we approached the heavily armed guards at the checkpoints, we were confronted by batteries of cameras. Out on the desert trails used by migrants to cross from Mexico into the US, where we were placing jugs of water to prevent travelers from dying of thirst, we were aware that sensors were hidden all around us in the wilderness, to detect the presence of anyone passing through. On one trail we walked, we heard a helicopter thrumming loudly just over a rise, dipping low to look for migrants. Even in the vast emptiness of the Sonoran Desert, we are being watched, and our identities and intentions are questioned.
Burklo Desert
The Rev. Jim Burklo observes a migrants' trail in the Arizona desert.
On another "water drop" walk, I engaged in rich conversation with one of our guides, John Heid. He is a Quaker living in the remote town of Ajo, Arizona, where he is active in the local Samaritan Patrol, providing humanitarian aid to migrants crossing the desert. He mused that the Border Patrol is watching everybody in the borderlands, and that it is necessary for citizens to watch back. One of the critical roles of the border justice activists is to keep track of the behavior of migra agents, who have on many occasions been known to slash the jugs of water that Samaritans leave in the desert for the migrants. Last year, my students found a number of slashed water jugs on a trail. In Tucson this year, we listened to other border activists tell of the arbitrary treatment that asylum-seekers get from the Border Patrol. Some are allowed to enter the country and stay with relatives pending a court hearing, others are put into detention centers - sometimes separated from their children - until they go to court. Others are summarily deported, all without apparent rhyme or reason.
But activists are watching. We went to the Operation Streamline federal court proceeding in Tucson. Some migrants caught by migra are deported quickly, and others arbitrarily are chosen to be put through the court in order to criminalize them, with the intention of deterring re-entry by threatening them with longer and longer jail sentences. No one knows whether this very expense process of criminalization is effective in reducing re-entries. But citizens are watching and asking such questions. I take students to Operation Streamline every year, and every time I go, Lois Martin is there. A local activist with No More Deaths, one of the border justice groups in the Tucson area, she has devoted herself to witnessing this court procedure. The judge knows she's watching. The prosecutors know she's watching. The defense attorneys, a motley crew of private-practice lawyers paid per-diem, know that she is watching. I have no doubt that her presence, and the presenothers like us who pass through the courtroom, have a salubrious effect.
We paid a visit to the No More Deaths/People Helping People office in Arivaca, AZ, from which activists monitor the human rights situation in this tiny town just ten miles from the border. We also visited John Rueb, an organic garlic farmer near Arivaca, who is much more annoyed with the intrusions of the Border Patrol than he is with the steady stream of migrants who pass through his property. The residents of Arivaca are being watched. And they are watching back. Residents of this remote area have organized to demand their constitutional rights, and they are having an influence. Last year, whenever we drove through the Border Patrol checkpoints in that area, we were stopped and asked if the people in our van were US citizens. This year, every time, we were simply waved through.
Big GAFA is watching us. Big Brother and Big Sister and Big Business and Big Migra and Big Government are watching us.
Are we watching back?
If the quality of our watchfulness toward powerful institutions is high and pure, if we are watching with both acuity and compassion, if we are watching what is actually happening, releasing prejudices and preconceptions, this deep mindfulness becomes a powerful force for positive social change. Every year, I tell my students, who sometimes feel overwhelmed by the seemingly intractable problems along the border, that they can change the world just by asking thoughtful, sincere questions. This year was no exception: my students posed queries that gave people pause, lifted them out of the routine details in which they'd lost themselves, and inspired them to look at the bigger picture. Very often, people are moved to be their best selves when they know they are the objects of open-minded, open-hearted attention.
Watching the watchers: this is where spirituality and social justice meet. St Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic of the 16th century, wrote this pithy line in her autobiography: "Mire que le mira" - "See that you are seen". She referred to the mystical experience that our true selves are one with God, the Christ, the One who lovingly "sees" us from within. This divine seeing happens when we direct our focused, non-judgmental, unblinking attention to the social structures that affect our lives, for good or ill. We all need to see, and to be seen - in quiet personal meditation as well as in Washington, Silicon Valley, and the desert borderlands. Our spiritual fulfillment depends on this kind of seeing - and our democracy depends on it, too.
The Rev. Jim Burklo serves as associate director of religious life at the University of Southern California. This post is republished with permission from his blog Musings on the Progressive Christianity website.