Gabe Gonzalez: This is America, stop the raids

Our government should stop destroying families.

The morning of May 12 was like any other morning in most towns and cities across the country. In New York, children were playing in the schoolyard. In Seattle, families were just waking up. In Chicago, where I live, it was a nice day but nothing special.

But in Postville, Iowa, men with guns came looking for people.

The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided the Agriprocessors slaughterhouse in Postville. ICE detained more than 700 people.

While kids across America played and learned, children in Postville had their fathers and mothers taken away. While most of us got dressed and went to work, our fellow human beings were rounded up like animals and placed in sheds, their lives pulled out from under them.

This is not the country that I love. This not America, home of the free.

This is closer to Chile in 1973, or Myanmar today.

Raids like the one in Postville, Iowa, or the dozens of others that ICE has conducted elsewhere around the country since the year began, tarnish our nation with the tactics of brutalization and oppression.

In my home, I was taught that America was the land people fled to, not where they were forced, at gunpoint, to leave.

In my school, I was taught that America would always have enough – that we fed the world.

In my church, I was taught that in America, we welcome the stranger among us, and how we treat the least of us is the measure by which we are judged.

But now, where we once saw strength, we see fear.

Where we once promoted abundance, we now hoard in fear of scarcity.

Where we felt compassion, we now preach hate and division.

These raids, wherever they take place, are ugly examples of the narrowing of our moral regard for our fellow human beings.

It is no coincidence that the raids against undocumented immigrants in Iowa come just weeks after thousands of Americans took to the streets in cities across the country to demand comprehensive immigration reform, and only days after political commentators across the country commented that Latinos will be a key swing vote in the presidential election. The government is trying to intimidate immigrant communities to be silent.

Now is the time for Americans to stand up and demand an end to raids against immigrants. Today, each of the current presidential candidates should call for an immediate end to the cruel and inhuman ICE policies that continue to destroy families across the country.

In America, we are all in it together. Together we must work toward our shared dream, a dream that includes and respects all God’s children – including undocumented workers in Iowa. Our country is great, but it falters. Let us put it on the right path, the compassionate path, together.