by Jim Phillips

In the past few weeks, the governors of several states—including Texas, Florida, and Arizona—have begun shipping immigrants to other locations outside their states. For example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered the sending of dozens of immigrants to the Massachusetts community of Martha’s Vineyard. These governors have also sent busloads of immigrants to Washington, DC and other cities. The dozens shipped in this way include men, women, and children. In some cases, they have simply been removed and sent without their consent. In other cases, the immigrants have been promised that they were being sent to places where they would be given jobs and other support—none of which was true.

Immigrants and asylum seekers are a vulnerable population. Very often, they have experienced violent or traumatic experiences in their home countries and on their journeys to the United States. Many are the victims of domestic and sexual abuse, gang violence, the violent takeover of their land or homes by gangs, and they are often unable to depend on protection or justice from corrupt police and courts in their home countries. Their trauma is often compared to that of fleeing a war zone. When they arrive in the U.S. hoping for something better, they are met with a confusing bureaucracy that tends to treat them as numbers or unwanted baggage, often exacerbating their trauma.

To clarify once again, many of those who immigrate to the United States are asylum seekers. Under federal and international law, even if they arrive in the U.S. without documents, they are legally entitled to remain here until such time as an immigration court hears their case. In many cases, it will be months or several years before they have their immigration hearing. During this time, they have a legal right to remain in the U.S. Some are detained in immigration detention centers as they await a hearing. Others are allowed to live in the community, although they may be required to be monitored or to report regularly.

It is true, as many have argued, that the burden of accepting and integrating numbers of immigrants should be shared more equitably among regions of the U.S. But simply using vulnerable people as pawns to make a point strikes many of us as wrong. For some, it evokes a similarity to human trafficking. In at least a few cases, local law enforcement officials have begun to investigate whether there have been violations of law in what the governors have done. Javier Salazar, the sheriff of Bexar County, Texas—which includes the city of San Antonio—has initiated an investigation into whether Florida governor DeSantis is complicit in violating Texas law with false promises to immigrants held in San Antonio in order to induce them to be transported willingly to places like Massachusetts. There is also the question of whether these governors have interfered with the jurisdiction of the federal government over immigration affairs.

To be clear, people in the cities and communities to which the immigrants have been shipped usually had no warning of what was coming. Mostly, they have responded with hospitality and generosity, despite the strain caused by this sudden arrival of groups of people who have many immediate needs. We are a nation of immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees, and many of us are aware of this. We cannot excuse the despicable use of human beings as pawns in a larger game, no matter what that “game” is.

In response, one proposal that has been voiced is for the President and the Congress to declare that immigrants who have been transported by these governors should be granted immediate U.S. citizenship or special status. Such a thing has some precedent. In the 1980s, Congress passed legislation granting Cuban exiles special status in the United States, bypassing normal immigration procedures.

As an organization devoted to peace, human rights, and the search for truth and reconciliation, Peace House deplores the misuse of human beings such as that exemplified by these governors. There is great need to fix a broken immigration system, but inhuman treatment is no way to achieve that end. How this inhumane drama plays out will tell us something about who we are as a people and a country.