As I read the above headline in My San Antonio News, my thoughts began to stir; by the time I finished the article, I was both angry and ashamed.

In the heat of an August day last year, 10 masked cartel gunmen roared aboard SUVs onto a street in a working-class neighborhood of Juarez, Mexico. Four people soon lay dead amid spent AK-47 shell casings.

Two were brothers who lived with their families a few houses apart and earned extra cash as neighborhood marijuana pushers, court testimony would later show. A third victim that day was the 16-year-old son of one of the brothers; another was a bystander.

The gunmen issued a chilling departing vow: They’d soon return to finish off the four sons of the other brother.

Their sons’ mother, newly widowed, had heard about a quick legal way out: political asylum in America.
-My San Antonio News

Let’s see what’s wrong with this picture? A man with kids aged 9-22 wants to earn some extra cash. Hell, that’s understandable. I’ve got kids, they’re not cheap.

So back to the story, the man needs extra cash and decides to hook up with his brother and start wheelin’ and dealin’ a little mota outside of the tienditas.

At first, all is well. The man’s got a little extra jingle in his pockets, kids have new shoes, are enrolled in private schools and his lovely wife begins sporting manicured french tips and Gucci shades. Life is grand, until....The man gets popped.

Why? Who knows why. Maybe he was dealing in the wrong area, maybe he took more than his cut, maybe a new boss took over the plaza and brought in his own men for dealing, or just maybe it was just life running it’s course, coming back around, full circle to bite him in the ass. It happens, he wasn’t the first and I’m sure he won’t be the last to die by a bullet in Juarez.

Now the lovely wife with the beautifully manicured french tips is beside herself. Whatever will she do? The narcos threatened her kids, there’s no more cash rolling in and she wants to get out of mean, nasty, drug infested, narco ravaged Mexico. Alas, no worries, she has a plan. She packs up the kids, crosses over the Paso del Norte pedestrian bridge into El Paso, Texas, and with tears flowing from her Gucci shaded eyes begs for political asylum which federal immigration judges DENIED. Boo fucking hoo, cry me a river.

Federal immigration judges have denied them all sanctuary and are, one of their attorneys says, “sending them back to their deaths.” Two deported sons are hiding out in drug-war savaged Juarez, where murders are surging despite the military’s presence there.

Their mother and two brothers are awaiting a last-ditch appeal to learn whether America will send them packing too.

“(He) is a 9-year-old boy!” Pennsylvania immigration attorney Craig Shagin, who is handling the case, said about the youngest son. “They’re going to take this perfectly adorable kid and throw him back into hell? From a humanitarian point of view, this is really hard to watch.”
-My San Antonio News

Sound cold? Am I lacking compassion for not seeing the American courts great act of humanitarian injustice? I don’t think so. I do feel for the children, but her, not at all.

She willingly, along with her husband, enjoyed the fruits of drug money, blood money. She boldly defied our laws and aided her husband in stealing the security and tranquility from innocent Juarez families and now she wants out. Why didn’t she seek asylum before her husband started dealing? What about when he started dealing, wasn’t Juarez just as violent?

Poor child, her youngest son, if the U.S. doesn’t grant his Mother sanctuary he’ll be thrown back to hell. Do you know how many beautiful, perfectly adorable kids we have in Mexico, do you know how many are in Juarez alone? Are they all refugees? Are we in hell?

Found in Juarez last month, the two brothers who fled the city with their mother and younger siblings last summer emerged from a house where they’ve been laying low since their deportations in April.

Just a few doors away the night before, masked gunmen in an SUV cornered three young men who’d been walking down the street. The gunmen forced all three to kneel, and then executed only one man, witnesses said. Though not a relative of the brothers, he shared the same last name.

The brothers said they felt embittered toward the U.S. for throwing them back into the line of fire. Immigration authorities “treated us very badly. They gave us a completely racist treatment,” one of the brothers told the Express-News on condition their identities be withheld.
-My San Antonio News

It’s a shame the two older children are now without a father or a mother, but racism has nothing to do with it. Laws are laws and rules are rules. Refugee sanctuary is a very serious issue. As horrific as things may be at times here in Mexico, life still exists. The world keeps spinning and we keep breathing. When the time comes, as it will for each and everyone of us, we will leave this earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. On this day, the same as the day we entered this world, for better or worse, richer or poorer, saint or sinner, we will exit this life as Mexicans, not as refugees.