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“Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore/

They’re already overcrowded, from your dirty little war/

Now, Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reason’s for/

so your flag decal won’t getcha into heaven anymore” — John Prine

Last night I was lucky enough to see the magnificent John Prine at the Fox Theater in Tucson. I realized while he sang this song that he could be speaking to a lot of different issues. I’m not sure which war he had in mind…Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Afghan War, the Korean or Vietnam War…or maybe the war on women’s reproductive rights that’s being silently waged on the Congressional floor. Perhaps it’s the war on those in poverty in our country. Maybe it’s the laughable “War on Drugs.”

Certainly, it could apply to our unnamed border war. I’m pretty sure Jesus don’t like killin,’ especially when it’s innocent refugees from a country whose economy has been torn to shreds. He’s probably not too keen on people dying of dehydration in the desert, or being picked up near the point of death and thrown into privatized prison facilities, becoming pawns in various money-making avenues (multi-national corporations, the military industrial complex, Arizona’s court system, the federal GDP).

The border war, like all our dirty wars do, provides jobs and money. I’ve been told the average entry-level border patrolman pulls in about $50k a year. The US attorney’s office in Tucson hired 21 new lawyers last year to prosecute immigrants. Criminal defense attorney and activist Isabel Garcia recently told me that our federal government pays CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) $13 million dollars a month to house immigration detainees in Arizona alone.

All this money to “secure” our border and all that’s happened is it’s become less secure. That is, if you’re measuring it in human losses lost here in the desert. As I’ve said before, at least 5,500 remains have been recovered in the desert since 1994. Before that year, which coincidentally marks the beginning of border militarization, the death rate of migrants was minimal. I guess some people use different measuring sticks for “security”…

There are other cases that are only slightly less horrific than death. I’ve been told  recently of many undocumented women who lose custody of their own children while being held in ICE detention facilities. Immigrants can be held in prison for many months with no explanation, no trial, and no legal counsel provided by the system. Actually, I think most mothers would agree having your kids taken away is worse than death.

In immigration court, there’s no such thing as a right to free legal counsel, as is required in America’s crime and punishment system. And there’s very little chance for a bond hearing, so people rot in detention while they lose their jobs, homes and families. In other words, immigration court dashes the basic American standards of being innocent until proven guilty, right to a fair trial, and any semblance of fairness and human rights.

It’s true, they aren’t legal citizens, but do we really want to live in a country with no human rights standards?

When I began this journey, I had hopes and faith in Obama. But I’m becoming cynical. The health care bill has been watered down and rendered powerless. So with an issue as contentious as immigration, I can’t imagine this administration will break with the status quo of promoting militarization and imprisonment while ignoring injustice in the courts.

As Garcia put it, “He [Obama] absolutely decided to shrug off the real issues about immigration and the border. In the campaign trail, he talked about realizing that NAFTA had displaced a lot of workers, but now he’s Mr. Trade! Militarization of the border has become worse—there’s a higher rate of deportations now than there were under his predecessor.”

While I don’t really think Obama himself is anti-immigrant, he’s become a pushover. Naming Napolitano Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was a move in the wrong direction. DHS has expanded the powers of 287(g), which allows local police departments to assume the role of immigration officials, thus encouraging racial profiling and unjustified arrests. In reference to Napolitano’s former stint as Arizona governor, Garcia says “She signed a lot of legislation that really hurt immigrants and their families. She helped militarize this border, that’s how she catapulted herself into national prominence.”

We can’t always trust our leaders to think with their hearts and minds rather than their political aspirations. But we can think for ourselves.

Prine’s song refers to the people who ironically call themselves patriots. Similarly, I saw another bumper sticker the other day that said, “The Christian Right is neither.” Sadly, the term “patriotism” has been co-opted by the right to mean warmongering, and “protecting” our land from terrorism and otherness. The right’s take on immigrants is that they should stay in their own country.

But I wish everybody in America driving around with a fish or a flag decal could see the migrants here on the border, talk to people in Nogales looking for family members, and realize the suffering that is going on here. These people are just trying to feed their families. They aren’t evil-plotting terrorists, plain and simple. They’re caught in our war, and it’s become a war on our own soil.

Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s based on family… despite the fact that its lore is a fallacy made up to disguise cultural theft and the removal of our native population… but that’s a whole other ball ‘o’ wax. This Thanksgiving, I hope our leaders will think of the families who have been split apart by this border — fathers who can’t attend their daughters’ weddings, brothers who can’t hug their sisters, and mothers who have lost their own children. Maybe it’s time we changed the way things are going, gave Thanksgiving an overhaul, and stopped oppressing people who are less fortunate. Maybe its time we embraced our brothers, embraced peace, and embraced the real meanings behind our iconography.