Michael W. Austin

I've been thinking about why the Samuel Sey situation is so infuriating to me, and I realize it's because someone at my parish is going through almost the exact same thing. Except my friend and her husband don't have well-connected, influential right-wing friends to advocate for them. A woman at my parish has a husband who is currently being detained by ICE. He entered this country legally on a visa. He married an American citizen, and through their marriage, they applied for permanent residency through the family reunification process. While his application is pending, he has been granted employment authorization, allowing him to work legally in the United States. Last week, he was at a job site with several other immigrants. I don't know the immigration status of everyone who was there, but I do know his circumstances. ICE picked them all up. He has now been detained for over a week, and his wife is having to spend thousands of dollars trying to secure his release on bond. Now, I've seen people explaining away Samuel Sey's situation by claiming there was a discrepancy with his paperwork. Well, here's what I know about the situation at my parish: There is no paperwork discrepancy. He has his paperwork. His paperwork was completed accurately. He was picked up simply for being present at a job site with other immigrants. As far as I know, there was nothing illegal happening. He was simply there, doing his job while having an accent and suspicious skin color. This is a man who entered the country legally, followed the immigration process, obtained authorization to work, and, to my knowledge, has committed no crime. Yet, he is sitting in detention, separated from his wife, being treated like a criminal for doing nothing more than showing up to work. And this is why the Samuel Sey situation makes me so angry. We are now being lectured about empathy by people who have spent years defending, promoting, and justifying the very system that is inflicting this trauma on families like the one in my parish. Suddenly, when someone they know and care about is caught up in that system, they recognize the cruelty. You would think this was the first good Christian man this has ever happened to. The lady from my parish, like so many others, doesn't have an influential network of conservative Christians demanding compassion on her husband's behalf. And watching people who helped normalize this cruelty chastise everyone else for failing to show empathy when it finally reaches someone in their own circle is absolutely maddening.