From the front lines of immigration

There is a line that forms at 7 a.m. along a gray building, 16 stories high, on Sansome Street in San Francisco. Some days the building cuts into the fog, others it simply blocks sunlight from those on the sidewalk standing in its shadow. Construction completed in 1944, and over the cold brass entrance doors, there is a glaring eagle made of reinforced concrete. It glowers.  
Women with babies slung in rebozos, or babies in strollers (which must be abandoned before entering the building) wait. Men in jackets, sweats, suits, wait. Families with young children playing hopscotch, wait.   

It is the line for immigration hearings. On the top floors of this building, two Chinese women committed suicide while waiting in the upper floors, which served as a detention center for Chinese immigrants during the Second World War. Europeans waited a few hours. Chinese waited for months, sometimes a year, sequestered from the outside, from loved ones who awaited them. 

Volunteers with Indivisible East Bay, an inter-faith community, provide rapid response information and free legal access for those in line. We offer hot coffee, tea, milk, snacks, a few camping chairs for those who are pregnant or just weary, and prayers (nondenominational — we include the Higher Power, the Great Spirit, Allah, the Font of Love). 

Small cups of hot coffee are welcomed by most; some reach out with trembling hands, due to nerves or the cold, or both. We are ex-Catholics, Catholics, Jews, led by a Unitarian, all looking to accompany those who have flown, walked, crawled, waded, or swum to our border. We remind them that things usually go well “inside,” but to make sure someone on the “outside” has their alien number, nation of birth, birthdate, address, and complete, correctly spelled name (the information needed to find them if they are detained).  

Their faces sometimes fall, and we give them a card with rapid response legal hotlines. Then we hold out the basket of crackers, cookies, and fruit bars. For the children, we give stuffies and sidewalk chalk. I go through the line one more time and offer to pray with them, reciting affirmations on a Sanctuary card. I originally thought the woman on the card, surrounded by yellow light, was Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was not. It was another mother, surrounded by perhaps the light of hope.  

We were told that 15 or so people a day from that line are detained. We wait for them to exit the building, smiling and relieved. Sometimes they do not come out. Last month, a mother waited for her son. She moved close to us and asked if she should worry because it had been two hours. She had a rosary around her neck. Together we prayed a decade, affirmed by the rabbi, the ex-Catholics, and the Unitarian, who asked, “How do you pray with others like that?” I told her, “That was my first time.”  

Then my two-hour stint was up. I got on my bike and left the line. I see the people at night before I sleep. I pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

Gretchen Bailey, Alameda Companion