MOTHER DEPORTED WITHOUT BABY

Sara Rodriguez was deported last Monday to El Salvador without her baby. She, like all women in the Houston area about to be deported, was
imprisoned in the Liberty County jail many miles away and without
representation.

All that was needed for someone to take the child to the Salvadoran
Consulate to arrange travel papers and then take her to the airport at
the time of the scheduled immigration flight. Although the INS would
allow someone to help, there was no one to help. By the time we learned of it, it was too late. The child was later taken to Children’s Protective Services, where she will be supported indefinitely with welfare funds.

How many other mothers are deported without their children?

Deportation is listed as one of the most serious sins by the Vatican II
document on The Church in the Modern World (No. 27) and also in
Veritatis Splendor (No. 80), and Evangelium Vitae (No. 3): "There exist
acts which per se and in themselves independently of circumstances are
always seriously wrong by means of their object, such as murder,
genocide, abortion, euthanasia, and willful suicide; all violations of
the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, offenses against
human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary
imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women
and children, degrading working conditions where men are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons: all these and the like are criminal; they poison civilization; and they debase the
perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the
Creator."

Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XVII, No. 3, May-June 1997