This is worse. Looking at these you can tell they have no significant monetary value. They were confiscated as a fear tactic. Nothing more.
This picture breaks my heart everytime it appears in my dash. It’s a fear tactic, alright but—
The first one in the left corner: It’s a first communion rosary, and it’s not cheap.
The black one in the first line: That’s a widow rosary and it’s old.
The white one in the second line: is a commemoration rosary. It has a miniature picture in the round part. I haven’t seen that since the 70′s.
In the third line, multicolor one: It’s an Anima mundi, I have only seen those in the hands of Rosary ministery’s old ladies. The oldest ones are from the 80′s after Juan Pablo II came to Mexico for the first time. It’s one of the old ones, I know because the crucifixes are different.
The third one on the fourth line: Red and gold. The style is old, the metal is dark, that’s a 50′s rosary, probably a quinceañera one (or it’s maybe older, from the 40′s when the brides carried red roses with their offerings).
The fifth one on the fourth line: It’s a quinceañera rosary with Ignatius’s tear. The style is old and in my part of Mexico is orphan girls who used it. At least it was when I was young.
The third one of the fifth line: the blue one with the anchor. That one I have only seen in Veracruz and it doesn’t look new.
The fifth one on the fifth line: That’s a 90′s wedding rosary. Black and white patterns were popular on that date.
The fourth one on the last line: That’s a first communion rosary from the 30′s. It’s delicate and most probably silver.
The rest wrench my heart too, the humble everyday rosaries with wooden beads and knots. Those are cheap and bear the wear and tear of their user handling. But those I described are much more.
Those are mother’s rosaries.
Those are not just rosaries. Those are mementos, that’s the proof of their families stories. They are taking from them the only portable things they can carry to feel the connection to their families.
It’s not a fear tactic. Call it like by its name.
It’s dehumanization.
I’m having decidedly unChristian thoughts about this entire administration.
…I am not a religious person at all, but this HORRIFIES ME.
No. You just… you do not do this. No. You do not take something like that away from someone. Ever.
No.
This is apparently preceding the Trump administration. ICE/border patrol sucked badly enough before Trump got into the picture; the photo was taken by Tom Kiefer, a janitor at a US Customs and Border Patrol facility in Arizona, of items he found in the trash; it was published in October of 2015.
Tom Kiefer’s photo project “El Sueno Americano” (“The American Dream”) shows objects he found in trash cans while working as a janitor and groundskeeper at a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol facility in Arizona. He said most of the items were taken from people entering the United States illegally. “Items such as rosaries are considered potentially lethal, non-essential property and discarded during intake,” he said.
Other things that are discarded include extra clothes, all headgear, and personal care items such as combs and toothbrushes. Also, “all food is regarded as contraband and discarded.”
None of that sucks as bad as the theft of the rosaries, but the mindset behind this, of taking whatever can be called “non-essential” from people who already have practically nothing, and then just throwing it away—in a capitalist society that places a significant importance on property rights—absolutely fits the bill of “dehumanization.”
