Dear Brothers and Sisters,
You have been granted many gifts that prepare you for your work. You are clearly physically fit for the job. You have been trained to detect vulnerable people who match the profile of those you are charged with apprehending. Most of us never even notice vulnerable people, but you do. This, along with a federal government mandate, makes you well suited for your job.
I am reminded of combat veterans. Well trained, doing their duty and backed by government authorities, they felt that their actions in combat were completely warranted. Even so, in my work with combat veterans, I have seen many of them, decades after their tour of duty, come to seek and receive forgiveness and release from the debilitating guilt and shame caused by what they had done in their youth. They could not escape the truth that human beings are not meant to do such things as are demanded in war.
Your occupation makes demands, as well. It demands that you participate in a dehumanizing policy that labels as “violent criminals” everyone you detain, even when your own heart and experience might tell you otherwise. It demands that you gather people up and deliver them to detention and deportation centers. It demands that you wrench people from their homes, work and families. The human soul is not meant for this. If you have not felt the tug of guilt or shame in your heart, you will, in time. You will look back on this occupation and realize, if only to yourself, that this work was not of God.
You are not under obligation to continue in this work. You are free to turn away from your position with its unjust demands and towards the vocation to which God calls all of us; to love our neighbors and to protect the vulnerable. You are highly skilled, and you recognize vulnerable human beings. You are almost there. All that is needed now is to stop apprehending them and, instead, to extend care and protection to them, as God gives you opportunity. Thus you will both provide for the most vulnerable and preserve your own soul from the crippling shame that lurks nearby.
May God turn your hearts towards God’s true calling for you and for all of us.
Sincerely,
Paul Palumbo,
Pastor, Lake Chelan Lutheran Church