Pogo Was Right

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Pogo was a beloved cartoon character featured in newspapers across the country from the 1940s to the 1970s. His creator, Walt Kelly, famously had Pogo looking at the man-made trash littering his forest home and saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

That line came to me as I sadly pondered yet another senseless and tragic killing last week—this time in front of the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement office. The targets, according to investigators, were ICE agents, but the victims were Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez and Norlan Guzman Fuentes, both shackled in the back of the ICE van that came under fire. Garcia-Hernandez was a father of four, and his wife, Stephany Guffeny, is expecting their fifth. She said her husband was a “good man, a loving father, and the provider of our family” (NPR, 9/30/25). Miguel Angel had lived in the U.S. for 20 years but did not yet have legal status.

The alleged shooter, Joshua Jahn—like the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk, and the alleged shooter at Evergreen High School the same day, and the alleged shooter of the Minnesota representatives—was not an immigrant but a man shaped by fear, anger, and hate, and in this case, from our own backyard. And that is my point—a point we all need to ponder like Pogo:  we have met the enemy and it is not a horde of “others.”

There is a very loud narrative in our country that portrays people crossing our border as rapists, drug dealers, criminals, and murderers. The facts do not support that narrative. Our own Justice Department reports that crime rates among those here without legal status, or awaiting asylum hearings (which is legal), are lower than those born in this country.

My reading group just finished the most agonizingly important book I have ever read: Crossing the Line by Sarah Towle. Towle’s wide-ranging research and first-hand work with nonprofit groups serving immigrants along the border more than supports the Justice Department’s statistics about who the real enemy is. Her book upended everything I thought I knew about our country’s decency and its border policies across every Congress and administration of the past 60 years. It is a difficult and fascinating read, and I commend it to you in the name of our shared humanity as people and as Christians. One factoid: in 2023, we imprisoned more than 68,000 children and youth whose only “crime” was arriving with—or being sent alone by—families desperate for a better life. 68,000 is more than any other country in the West.

We have some pondering—and some praying—to do about who our “enemies” really are. “Lord, forgive us, for we know not what we do,” we once confessed before the Great Thanksgiving. This Sunday, we will again share holy communion on our knees together, and fortunately for all of us, Jesus told us to be kind to our enemies, starting with ourselves.

The Rev. Matt Gaston is Lead Pastor of First United Methodist Church in Plano, Texas. This post is republished with permission from the church website.