Illegal Immigration and the Book of Ruth

We read the Book of Ruth every year for Shavuot, the harvest festival that commemorates the Jews receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. This year, Shavuot—which begins in the evening of May 30—will likely see more than the usual holiday celebrations combiniimng study, sweetness, and blintzes. If the days of Shavuot are like other recent days, they will each also see over 400 arrests of would-be immigrants to the United States by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many of those arrested will have lived among us for years, even decades. They will be men and women, old and young. Some will manage to fight their removals, finding the resources to assert defenses to deportation, to push back against unforgiving and complicated processes very much stacked against them. But many will not. Without the thousands of dollars it takes to hire an immigration lawyer, or perhaps with a record tainted by a minor crime—shoplifting, driving without a license, a bad check—they will be quickly deported. Some will be returned to countries they fled to escape persecution, danger, hunger, and privation. Some will be torn from their American families, creating near-orphans, almost-widows.