US call to reunite families separated by 'Operation Lone Star'

Family separation at US/Mexico border has been internationally condemned. Image: Columbans

Source: Faithful America

River buoys laced with circular saws. Separated, imprisoned migrant families. Border officers ordered to push exhausted asylum seekers - including children - into a rushing river. That's the brutal state of affairs along the Rio Grande River right now, thanks to Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott's 'Operation Lone Star.'

Abbott is Catholic, but he's making it clear that he takes neither Catholic social teaching nor the Gospels' instructions to welcome the stranger seriously. He's built a national name for himself in part through his extreme cruelty to those seeking safe refuge in the United States.

Thankfully, the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into Abbott's likely civil rights violations. That's a big step in the right direction, but there's more the federal government must do to help those whom Abbott has already harmed.

Our partners on the ground in Texas, along with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, say that one of the biggest things the Department of Homeland Security can do is reunite separated families immediately. Let's join together as Christians and lift up their voices to the administration - and in doing so, expose the hypocrisy of Abbott and other religious-right leaders who aren't practicing what Jesus preached.

This isn't the first time we've joined together to call out Abbott for mistreating immigrants. Late last year, more than 22,000 Faithful America members signed our petition asking the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to reprimand Abbott and other right-wing Catholic governors for using migrants as political pawns, shipping them to so-called "liberal" cities without any plan to shelter them or keep them safe.

Now that Abbott has taken his cruelty to a new level, local Catholic bishops are speaking out. After the Houston Chronicle exposed Operation Lone Star, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops released a critical statement:

"These mothers, fathers, children, and others are doing what anyone would do to find a better life…. The fact that they were born in a place which could not provide these basic human rights does not give anyone the right to treat them inhumanely."

The Texas bishops' conference is right. This ongoing cruelty and mistreatment of immigrants is sinful and wrong. We hope and pray that Abbott is held accountable for his actions - but in the meantime, let's push the federal government to do all it can to right Abbott's wrongs by reuniting the families he heartlessly separated.

To tell the Department of Homeland Security: Reunite families separated by the Abbott administration immediately, see:

https://act.faithfulamerica.org/sign/abbott-lone-star/?t=3&akid=8582%2E504440%2E3J6-P4

In peace,
- Karli, Rev Nathan, and the Faithful America team