We are delighted to welcome Kristin Heyer, who holds the Joseph Chair in Theology and is a Professor of Theological Ethics at Boston College. Kristin reflects on the current campaign of mass deportation in light of a Christian ethic. Framed by Church teaching from Vatican II to Pope Francis and Pope Leo, she critiques the intrinsic evil of mass deportation and offers a vision of a more Christian corrective to the border and immigration policy that is attentive to human dignity. As an educator, Kristin shares ways that her students have been transformed by experiences of encounter that force them to shift away from the dominant narratives of immigration.
Brian and Joe share stories about shifting the narrative as well. Brian shares the story of Samantha, a 7-year-old girl from Honduras whom he first met back in the Reynosa plaza in 2021. After a couple of years in the U.S., Samantha was excelling in school and had picked up perfect English. Everything seemed to be going great until Brian got some voice messages from an unknown phone number in Honduras. Joe shares the story of celebrating a communion service with women at a local detention center. The detained women felt falsely accused by the dominant narrative as being “the worst of the worst,” when the reality is that they have no criminal convictions and have been separated from their families. Accompanying detained individuals in a religious service like this reveals the reality and shifts the narrative.