All Are Responsible

All Are Responsible
Rabbi Hilly Haber 

This summer I joined an interfaith group of clergy and lay leaders at the Federal Plaza Immigration Court. We were there to accompany New Yorkers facing deportation, as they went to their immigration hearings and ICE check-ins. I met a family of five from El Salvador. A young woman here by herself from Venezuela. A father from Guinea whose four American-born children were anxiously waiting for him in their Bronx apartment.

As people filed in for their hearings, armed and masked ICE agents quietly began to line the hallways outside the courtroom. People began exiting the courtroom; an eerie quiet settled in the hallway. Suddenly, without warning, agents converged on a young man whose case had just been dismissed by the judge. He was handcuffed and whisked away in seconds.

This scene was repeated four more times in the next 30 minutes, a rapid and increasingly chaotic succession of arrests and detainments.

Since January 20th, over 3,200 people, including at least 50 children, have been arrested in New York City and held in squalid, overcrowded cells on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza.

Nationwide, ICE has deported over 180,000 people since January. Over 60,000 are detained in privately owned prisons, local jails, repurposed military bases, hastily assembled tent cities, and dilapidated, out-of-compliance-facilities like Delaney Hall in Newark. 70% of current detainees have never been convicted of a crime, and many are systematically denied their right to due process. The number of people detained in the first 50 days of the Trump administration exceeded the total number of people deported in the last year of the Biden administration.

These numbers reflect an assault on the very principles on which our country was founded. Early in his second term, President Trump expanded expedited removal, allowing the Department of Homeland Security to detain and deport someone without a hearing before an immigration judge. The Laken Riley Act, passed this year, mandates the detention of non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents, who are only accused of crimes but not yet convicted.

Countless immigration lawyers have told me that these new policies discourage clients from following the law and appearing for their hearings.

To be clear, our immigration system has been deeply flawed for decades under both democratic and republican leadership.

But, the fear in immigrant communities right now is devastating and the consequences of our country’s actions are deadly.

On July 19th, 55 year-old Tien Xuan Phan died while in ICE custody. On June 26th, Isidro Perez, a 75 year-old citizen of Cuba, died while in ICE custody. On June 25th, ICE announced that Johnny Noviello, a 49 year-old citizen of Canada, died at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. On June 7th, Jesus Molina-Veya, a 45-year-old citizen of Mexico, was found unresponsive on the floor of the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Yet, even as the deaths mount, our government builds more detention centers — with insulting names like Alligator Alcatraz, Cornhusker Clink, and Speedway Slammer. Families are torn apart. Hardworking, law-abiding mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters languish and die.

Who is responsible for the thousands of lives upended, for the children separated from their parents, for the gross miscarriage of justice taking place in courts, green card interviews, and asylum offices across our country, the fear pervading immigrant communities? Who is responsible for the deaths of our brothers and sisters in the care and custody of our federal government?

This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, offers a powerful ritual to help us think through this question. Here’s the situation: an anonymous corpse has been found in an open area between two towns, where neither town has jurisdiction. In the absence of a guilty party, the elders measure the distance between the body and the boundaries of nearby towns. The elders whose town is closest to the corpse are responsible for purging the guilt brought on by bloodshed. They slaughter a heifer over a running stream, and as the heifer’s blood spills out, they wash their hands and recite these words:

Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it done. God, absolve Your people Israel…, and do not let guilt for the blood of the innocent remain among Your people Israel.

The Mishnah seeks to clarify the nature of the town’s relationship to the corpse. Did anyone really believe, “that the elders of the court were spillers of blood?” Why then did they need to declare their innocence? Our Sages imagine this: an outsider came to town in search of help but was sent away empty-handed. In desperation, he tried to rob someone and was killed in the process. The Sages believed that if such a scenario had occurred, the leaders’ failure to provide refuge or sustenance would have indeed implicated them in his death; his blood is on their hands.

This biblical ritual, and the Mishnah that comments on it, teach a powerful lesson about the boundaries of responsibility. Those whose negligence or indifference leads to human suffering may not simply wash their hands and declare their innocence. Each of us bears responsibility for the blood spilled on the border, and for the harm caused to those seeking safety and opportunity in our cities.

Jewish tradition offers a stunning rebuke to the cruel and pervasive disregard for human life that animates our government’s attitude toward immigrants. In Deuteronomy, we are instructed to include gerim, people who have fled their homelands, in the economic, social, and religious life of our people. Gerim are co-recipients of the land’s bounty. They must be treated equally under the law; they are included in the laws of Shabbat and participate in communal celebrations. Deuteronomy prohibits us from sending someone who has escaped from slavery back to their oppressor. Instead, we are obligated to ensure that a person who is fleeing danger and seeking freedom finds safe harbor, a means of supporting themselves, and a place to live in dignity and comfort. Most important, because of our own history of oppression and wandering, we are commanded to love the ger and to see ourselves in the faces and stories of people on the move.

At this time of crisis, it matters that we show our love, our commitment to the gerim in our midst through public action. We can support the New York for All Act and the Access to Representation Act, which would restrict state and local cooperation with ICE and guarantee legal representation to any New Yorker facing deportation. We can also support organizations like Project Rousseau, Make The Road, NYCLU, and the New Sanctuary Coalition. Central members can look for opportunities in the Weekly to support our newest neighbors. None of this is enough, but as Jews, as the children of immigrants, as people who believe in the promise of this country, we cannot stay silent.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote that “in a free society all are involved in what some are doing. Some are guilty, all are responsible.” The courtroom scene I witnessed this summer shook me to my core. Seeing men, women, and children disappear before my eyes was shocking, yet all too familiar. How many times have our people had to flee? Faced imprisonment and execution? Been stripped of our humanity?
At this time of reflection and teshuvah, let us take responsibility for the fate of our neighbors and stand up for the value and dignity of every human life.