By Rhina Guidos
WASHINGTON (CNS) — After hearing about the plight of a
cancer-stricken child whose mother was facing imminent deportation, a U.S. border bishop, Texas Bishop
Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, decided to pay the pair a visit at the hospital.
On Aug. 7, he prayed at a Texas hospital with bed-ridden 8-year-old
Alia Escobedo, suffering from bone cancer, and her mother Maria De Loera, the
child’s only caretaker, before heading to a meeting with immigration officials
— a hearing in which the mother was to report for deportation but one which
the bishop attended in her place.
“I was informed about the situation over the weekend, I’d
heard rumblings,” said Bishop Seitz in an Aug. 7 phone interview with Catholic
News Service. “As a parish priest, one of the most rewarding ministries was
through the sick. I always felt close to children who were sick.”
At the hospital, he said, he read Scriptures with the mother
and daughter, who are Catholic, and prayed. He said he tried to reassure the
mother that there were a lot of people trying to help.
“It was a pleasure to be able to meet them and hopefully bring
a bit of a consolation to this young child,” he said. “They’re amazingly
resilient. This mom had her husband killed in (Ciudad) Juarez, escaped to El
Paso running for her life. When she came here, her youngest daughter was
diagnosed with bone cancer.”
The last two and half years have been filled, not just with
treatments at the hospital, but also with the threat of deportation. An asylum
request De Loera filed in 2014 was denied the following year, and since then,
she has been in the process of being removed from the country by immigration
officials.
Bishop Seitz, along with other clergy, accompanied De Loera’s
lawyer to see officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also
known as ICE, “to reconsider ‘ given the circumstances,” he said.
He said he met with a case worker and a supervisor as well
as other officials.
“I think they were relatively receptive,” he said.
On Aug. 8, ICE officials granted De Loera a six-month stay
to continue watching over her daughter during treatment, said Dylan Corbett,
executive director of the Hope Border Institute, which also has been involved calling
in attention to the case. At her daughter’s bedside, De Loera wears an
ICE-issued ankle monitor to track her location even though she has not
committed a crime and arrived seeking asylum, Corbett said.
“Maria and Alia are the human face of a broken immigration
system and militarized border enforcement,” said the Hope Border Institute in
an email statement. “They’re the reason we’re fighting for reform and a more
human border.”
“I’m concerned about the very fact that we had to intercede
on behalf of this mother under these circumstances,” Bishop Seitz said to CNS, because
it shows that “even the most obvious humanitarian reasons for allowing a person
to stay are no longer sufficient.”
Bishop Seitz made headlines in July because of a pastoral
letter in which he denounced the “demonization of immigrants” and pleaded with
others for compassion and solidarity. He said he’s aware that even among
Catholics, the issue of immigration can spark disagreement.
“I just ask them to bring these issues to their prayer,” he
said. “And also, to get to know a recent immigrant and, especially, to get to
know one who fled here without the opportunity to arrange documents because
they were fleeing for their lives, before deciding what the proper resolution
of these cases should be.”
Jesus, he said, spoke to questions of law and recognized that
there is the law of God and human laws, and human laws can be good or they can
be bad.
“Bad laws need to be changed and sometimes bad laws cannot
be followed,” he said. “One example is the law that permits abortion. Just
because the law says it’s OK, it does not make it OK.”
He also asked others to think about the circumstances that
lead others to flee their native countries.
“If any of us lived in a situation, in a country where there
is extreme violence, we would do whatever it took to find a situation of safety,
even if it meant crossing a border,” he said. “We would do it if our children were
starving. We wouldn’t say ‘I guess we’ll just stay here and watch our children
die.’ Nobody would do that. We would do whatever we needed to do.”
– – –
Follow Guidos on Twitter: @CNS_Rhina.
– – –
Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.
