At the Detention Center

 

Every month on the first Monday of the month, the American Friends Service Committee and some other organization sponsor a vigil at the privately owned detention center that houses people awaiting deportation hearings in Aurora, Colorado. This month it was Regis University and the theme of the gathering was love, because we are so close to Valentine's Day.

It was moving to be part of a group of so many young and old, anglo and latino, of numerous different faiths, carrying signs and lighted candles. Chanting. We walked about a block from the corner where we started, showing our signs to passing cars, receiving honks of support, watching our step on the ice while keeping the candles upright and trying to sing lustily.

We came to a place where the public road was near the chain link fence and the chain link fence was near the building. We stopped. A student, Alejandro, spoke a poem he had written about the meaning of the desert, that desert that people cross, the place where so many die, a place with deep meaning in his own family. A woman who was known to those who come regularly spoke to say that while they had known her as someone who came and knelt at the fence to pray and cry out to God for her son's release, she was now there in gratitude. He had been released in November. What a blessing!

The students festooned the chain link fence with Valentine's Day balloons and paper streamers. Many signs were left on the fence with love as well. There were two carloads of Unitarian Universalists from Boulder in attendance with their yellow "Standing On the Side of Love" signs, and several more of our kind from other area congregations.

As we came to the end of the section where the public road was near the fence and near the building, we stopped again. In the driveway, one of the ominous white pickups was parked, with someone watching us. We chanted, there were announcements, and then a prayer. We walked back to the corner where we started, showing our signs again and chanting, our symbolic mission accomoplished.

There will be Valentine's cards for the detainees and for the workers in the detention center. And as always, encouragement for those who wait. Some of us will go to a deportation hearing ten days from now to show support. The struggle continues, with love and occasional glimmers of hope.