Politics - Culture

“The Refugees”: Gabriela’s Family Journeys to the U.S. for Asylum

The artist and author fear for the terror the family will encounter

When I saw the painting “The Refugees” of a woman with a small child and babe in arms crossing a desert in Mexico it reminded me of the children separated from parents or caregivers in detention centers across the U.S. I wanted to use it for a series of stories I’m researching and writing about families seeking asylum.

I phoned the artist Liz Pavlak in Minneapolis, where she was about to volunteer for the first time at the new Baha’i Food Bank a half block from where George Floyd was killed. After getting to know more about each other, I finally got up the nerve to ask her if I could use the painting for this article. She said, “Yes.”

Yay! But something disturbed me about the painting, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. As I looked at the “Refugees” print on Liz’s web-site, I hesitated to tell her my thoughts: How do you crop someone else’s painting! How could I tell her I want to do this?

I blurted out, “I might have to crop it.”

“That’s OK,” she said.

I continued, “I would need to cut out the wide path. With the policy changes limiting areas of the desert where the family could cross, I doubt there would be a clear path. And that woman would soon be dead, sexually assaulted, or have her baby taken away.”

I shocked myself by speaking so bluntly. To give you some examples of why my words to Liz about her “Refugees” painting may have sounded so jaded, I’ve been reading articles about asylum seekers, each one worse than the last.

One shocking article, “The Deadliest Crossing” revealed that approximately 9,000 people have died crossing the Sonoran desert. The family’s crossing would likely be guided by a coyote — a smuggler. He might extort a sexual favor for the journey.

Sexual assault is such a common payment for such crossings that girls as young as 12 take birth control before the journey. A representative of the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, which has expanded services to accommodate asylum seekers, said that 60% of migrant women said they had been sexually assaulted on one side of the border or another. She estimated the actual figure was 80%.

Though it is beyond the senses to comprehend, “at least 3 tender age shelters” have been “set up for child migrants” — toddlers and infants as young as eight months old.

God help me and especially them. The woman in the painting, who I will call Gabriela, may have already been traumatized before her path through the desert. She may have been a victim of domestic violence in her home.

Her and/or her family members may have been extorted, beat up, maimed, sexually assaulted, gang-raped, tortured, or forced to view family members who were assassinated, tragically, in a group grave. Her older son or nephew may have been ongoingly pressured into joining a gang where he would sell drugs and kill others or be killed.

These things may have happened in an “unprotected community”. This, unfortunately, is a community that does not protect family members from abuses and may be party to them. In desperation to save her children and herself, Gabriela may be paying large quantities of money, perhaps some borrowed, to try to save her baby, her daughter, and herself.

She likely has not heard about families being separated or turned back at the border since COVID to find shelter in often dangerous border towns in Mexico. If Gabriela did hear of migrants criminalized in the U.S., these conditions in the U.S. may have seemed safer than what she was facing in her home country. As the cactus thorns prick Gabriela and her daughter’s feet and legs on the path they walk in sandals, I imagine Gabriela is praying for at least her children to make it alive to the U.S.

The dangers facing Gabriela and her children are ones artist Liz Pavlak and I discuss while looking at her painting on her website. At the end of our hour-long lament of a conversation, Liz tells me, “Do whatever you want with the painting,” entrusting “The Refugees” with me at the risk that there might be little or nothing left of it in the end.

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Resources to end the torture of separated families:

Please join your voice to that of the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, and organizations working day and night against “torture” and criminalization of asylum-seekers.

You can write to Congress and to the White House: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, D.C. 20500

The U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224–3121. They connect directly with the Senate office. You can reach your senator or representative through this link: Congressional Institute

Links: Organizations helping migrant families are listed within these articles: How to Donate to Help Migrant Children at the Border, 9 Organizations Helping Migrant Children that You Can Donate To