Jesuit-Educated Members of Congress Respond to Family Separation on the U.S.-Mexico Border

BY JULIA MURPHY | June 28, 2018

Chaos and political turmoil have been sparked recently by the Trump Administration’s “Zero-Tolerance” policy which has led to the prosecution of thousands of families who, fleeing violence in their home countries, have crossed the United States-Mexico border. This policy has also involved forcibly separating parents from their children. In the wake of the massive media coverage of these occurrences, many politicians, including members of Congress who are graduates of Jesuit high schools and universities, have expressed moral outrage at the Administration, calling on the President to end these policies in the name of human rights and dignity.

Since the initial outcry, President Trump has issued an executive order ending the policy of family separation at the border. However, human rights violations continue to be committed at the border and around the country by members of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Much of the nation continues to put pressure on the administration to reunite separated families and to treat migrants humanely and justly.

Fifty-eight graduates of Jesuit institutions currently serve in the U.S. Congress. As alumni of institutions which strive to promote ideals of justice in a faith context, many have spoken out again this unjust policy*:

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA-33;)
St. Ignatius High School – Cleveland, OH ‘87, Georgetown Law ’94)

Representative Ted Lieu, from the thirty-third district of California, is a 1987 graduate of St. Ignatius High School in Cleveland, Ohio and a graduate of Georgetown University Law School. He spoke out against family separation by playing a recording on the House floor of children crying while being taken from their parents. When asked to stop because of a “breach of decorum,” Lieu responded by asking the House why this was being hidden from the people, before eventually stopping the recording.

These Congresspeople and many others are drawing from the Jesuit ideals of human dignity and justice in order to enact real change in the lives of migrants. Their bold statements call attention to the policies in the United States that they believe to be outdated and inhumane. Their voices have proven to be integral to the struggle for human rights, as seen with the issuing of Trump’s most recent executive order. Their voices will continue to be integral as Congress and the people of the United States proceed with this issue.

*This list is not exhaustive.

Julia Murphy

Julia Murphy is a 2019 graduate of Saint Louis University, where she pursued majors in English and Spanish and minors in urban poverty studies and Latin American studies. Most recently, she spent eight months as a volunteer with Rostro de Cristo in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she worked in community organizing and youth development at Hogar de Cristo, a Jesuit social housing organization. She is passionate about working for justice, which stems from her upbringing as well as from her Jesuit education at SLU and with the Casa de la Mateada program in Córdoba, Argentina through Loyola Marymount University and the Universidad Católica de Córdoba, where she studied during the spring of 2017. She is from Cleveland, Ohio, where she spent the summer of 2018 as an intern with the Ignatian Solidarity Network.