Putting the Pieces Together on Immigration

One of the most intriguing aspects of an archival collection is that it contains many bits and pieces that, woven together, reveal entire stories. Sometimes a curious researcher comes upon the many pieces of a big, international story. In the Loretto Archives a huge story of international importance today lies hidden in bits of data spread across the school records, the overseas mission records, the personnel records and the personal papers of individual members, financial data in the administrative records, and artifacts associated with the records of social protest.

Discovery of a big story can start anywhere. Pick up any thread and follow it. A blood-red tee-shirt, for instance, proclaims a big chapter of a big story with its message “#Shut Down Stewart–resist migrant incarceration.com.” Sister Alicia Ramirez donated the tee-shirt to the Archives, along with documentation stating that she wore it during a protest march in 2015.

The target of the protest, Stewart Detention Center, is located just outside the tiny town of Lumpkin, Georgia; it is the largest private prison in the southeastern US, confining up to 1800 men and women. The facility is managed by CoreCivic, one of two giant private prison businesses that operate on contract to the United States government. Why would such a facility be the target of protests by Catholic sisters and others?

The answer lies in the Loretto administration records of the Loretto Archives, in the files of annual meetings of the Loretto Community, where official statements spanning more than fifty years document Loretto’s commitment to stand on the side of immigrants (see the list below for representative decisions on other social justice and peace issues). 

One such statement on immigration asserts: “That the Loretto Community stands for the rights and dignity of all immigrants, regardless of their legal status. That as an Immigrant Welcoming Community, the Loretto Community supports Comprehensive Immigration Reform …and will support … legislation that promotes family unification, worker justice, and a path to citizenship.”

Stewart Detention Center is one of many facilities which, in the view of Loretto members, works against the rights and dignity of immigrants. Stewart houses immigrants charged with illegally entering the United States and detained pending deportation. Some detainees are awaiting judgment about their applications for asylum on the basis of threatening conditions in their countries of origin. All detainees share the same desire for safety, security and work opportunities for themselves and their families.

In another part of the Loretto Archives are financial records of grants made to a small non-profit, El Refugio, also in Lumpkin, Georgia. The narrative portion of the request from El Refugio describes their hospitality house on the road to Stewart Detention Center and the services they offer to immigrant families and to detainees. “El Refugio accompanies immigrants at Stewart Detention Center (SDC) and their loved ones through hospitality, visitation, support, and advocacy for a just immigration system…. Mi Casa Es Su Casa is not a cliché. It’s what we have been doing for 14 years. People are detained for weeks and months at SDC, so families often travel every weekend to visit them. In this era of great uncertainty for all immigrant communities, we … create …spaces where people feel safe.” 

Loretto protesters noticed El Refugio while marching to Stewart, and later returned to enjoy a fundraising lunch offered by El Refugio volunteers. An enduring relationship developed: Loretto friends urged El Refugio to apply for Loretto social justice funds; residents at Loretto Motherhouse collected clothing and donations and continue to look for ways to support the work of El Refugio.

Loretto commitment to meeting immigrant needs and advocating for their rights is neither an accident nor an abstraction. The personnel records in the Loretto Archives, and the personal papers of individual members contain abundant data about the lived commitment of many individual Loretto women. Some of these data have been captured in published narratives and biographies. Examples, from a volume titled Century of Change, reveal that Loretto’s organizational commitment is firmly grounded in the experience and compassion of individual members.

Loretto works ‘beyond our borders’ by participating, both politically and socially, as advocates for justice in the life of immigrants in the United States. Sister Alicia Ramirez, who marched in the red tee-shirt to Stewart in 2015, served in Central America twice, as a teacher in the 1970s and again, as a nurse in the 80s. She has said about her work: ‘I think my involvement in immigration work today is due in large part to living those years in Nicaragua.’

As personnel records show, many Loretto members have been working in many places throughout the United States with undocumented persons. They have been present at border-crossing areas, translating in medical facilities, and teaching ESL. All have assisted in a great variety of ways to welcome and to meet the needs of those persons who come from beyond our U.S. borders.

Sister Kit Concannon spent years teaching in Peru, becoming fluent in Spanish. After Peru she work as a mental health counselor in Detroit, Michigan, where she became very familiar with Detroit community resources and served as coordinator of the refugee committee. Knowing the landscape of both Detroit and Latin America, Kit met immigrant people, heard their difficult reports of why they had to leave their land, and assisted them to begin receiving the help they needed. Many decided to flee to safety in Canada where they could avoid the drawn-out court procedures of the U.S., which more often than not ended in deportation. Kit helped the sanctuary movement quickly evolve into an underground railroad in the border city of Detroit. She was fearless in accompanying refugees into Canada.

The experiences of several dozen Loretto women in South and Central America resulted in another, seemingly unrelated, work of advocacy which is documented in the Loretto Archives in the record group of Standing Committees. These committees, established by formal decision of the community, represent the organizational work of Loretto directed at peace and justice concerns. The files of Loretto’s Latin America and Caribbean Committee (LACC) document its decision in 1990 to send members to Columbus, Georgia for a demonstration at Ft. Benning’s School of the Americas (SOA). The demonstration was in memory of Catholic clergy and others murdered by Latin American soldiers trained by the US Army at the School of the Americas.

Attending the memorial in its early years were a handful of friends of missionaries, medical workers and activists murdered throughout Latin America by repressive regimes. By 1995, the gathering each November at Ft. Benning had grown to a full three days of information workshops, non-violent protest trainings, and demonstrations, drawing more than 10,000 participants–priests, nuns, unionists, and students protesting in the name of individuals victimized by government violence in Latin America. 

Loretto’s LACC recruited members, friends and students who attended in large numbers every year for more than twenty-five years. A life-sized exhibit fills one room of the Loretto Archives Museum, with white crosses carried in protest now hanging on a chain-link fence.

In the first decade of the 21^st century, violence against Latin Americans by their own governments in their own countries had morphed into violence against Latin American immigrants on the US southern border by the US government.  It became apparent to many at the SOA protests that US Army training of Latin American militaries was one cause of increased immigration into the US. Citizens of South and Central America were fleeing the repressive military tactics that the US had taught to their Latin American governments. With this recognition, as the files in the Loretto Archives attest, Loretto peace and justice work shifted from protest at Ft. Benning to direct assistance to immigrants, especially in the desert borderlands of the US southwest, but also in Lumpkin Georgia, at Stewart Detention Center, just fifty miles from the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning, Columbus Georgia. Sister Alicia’s red tee shirt will soon join the white crosses on the chain-link fence, further testimony to the consequences of SOA training. Truly an internationally significant story found amid the files and artifacts of the Loretto Heritage Center Archives.

Peace, justice and social issues about which Loretto has made formal statements from 1967 to the present:

• Alienated Youth 1967
• Peace Issues 1967
• Preference for the Poor 1967
• Support for Individual Conscience 1967
• Opposition to War 1968
• Social/Political 1968
• Boycott Lettuce 1972
• Social Responsibility in Investments 1972
• Women’s Issues 1972
• Farm Labor rights 1973
• Amnesty 1974
• Just and Ethical Use of Loretto Land 1974
• World Hunger 1974
• ERA 1976
• Boycott JP Stevens 1977
• Indian Treaty rights 1977
• Nuclear Issues, 1978
• Central American Refugees 1981
• Nuclear Disarmament 1982
• Land Trust 1985
• Undocumented Workers 1987
• Native American Women 1991
• Boycott Chiquita Bananas, Nestle Corp, Libby, Shell Oil
• LGBTQ+ Civil Rights 1992
• Environmental Issues 1994
• Political Asylum 1995
• Racism 1999
• Minimum Wage 2006
• Immigration Reform 2009
• Divestment from Fossil Fuels 2015
• Just Wages for Loretto workers 2018