What does it mean to be a Lasallian?

I think immediately of two of our core values: “Respect For All Persons” and “Concern For the Poor and Social Justice.”

How one actually goes about living those values, however, is a trickier question.

I began to understand the answer to that last week in Tucson, Arizona, on the El Otro Lado (EOL) immersion, a program that provides students with firsthand exposure to the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The trip’s first day set the tone. We watched 15 detainees processed through federal court, all picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol from the previous weekend. According to our guide, that was a small number; she said she usually sees at least twice that amount.

Only 15, and I find it difficult to articulate the emotional weight of even that many.

It’s a girlfriend holding aloft her 15-day-old baby to the judge, hoping the child will be enough to prove its father’s connection to the states.

It’s a teenage boy blowing kisses to his crying mother as he’s escorted from the courtroom in chains.

It’s a line of iron links and bright orange jumpsuits, like the ill-fitting uniforms can somehow distract from the detainees’ eyes and faces as they are herded out single file.

Their humanity is something I would not truly have understood if I hadn’t seen it for myself on EOL — because, for all the immigration news I read as a journalist, I’m realizing I had never truly heard those individual stories, nor seen their faces. 

Being on this trip taught me that much of what is shown in the media about immigration is not the full story. Regardless of political alignment, reporters and officials alike tend towards sensationalizing rather than humanizing, prioritizing sweeping statements and emphatic statistics over individuals.

EOL did not teach me compassion so much as it taught me what the word “immigration” actually means without headlines and arguments.

The Lasallian values aren’t slogans; they’re a commitment to recognize and support people wherever you can. The more you interact with a person face to face, the more difficult it becomes to deny their humanity.

Living Lasallian values means seeing people first — and to do that, you have to understand what exactly they’ve been through.

To reach Tucson, immigrants must cross hundreds of miles of desert, and many begin much farther south in Mexico or even other countries. And the journey just gets more dangerous and expensive the longer it is.

According to our guide, the average price that cóyotes — guides who are often connected to cartels — charge to take one person across is 12,000 USD, plus an additional fee for supplies. A well-paid worker in Mexico earns about 50 USD a week, she said, and often, families sell nearly everything they own to afford the journey.

Not every cóyote is honest, either. Many hold migrants hostage to extort more money from the families which, while devastating on its own, is only one risk immigrants face in the desert.

There are countless ways the journey can kill a person: dehydration, heatstroke, infection, injury, illness, animal attacks, and exposure. 

And for all those broad-brush facts, what really brought the humanity of the situation into focus for me was a wooden cross that stands 15 miles north of the border. It is a memorial for a stillborn child who was found a few yards behind it in the bushes with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and for his mother, whose fate is still unknown.

We stopped to pay respects to this tragedy, reading a poem left in a jar beside the cross and tucked in the rocks with flowers and children’s toys left by travelers. It wondered about what the woman had been running from and mourned the life her baby might have lived. She had no donkey, and no inn willing to take her in, it said.

She was only a few miles from civilization. 

Even for those who reach physical safety, there is always the threat of being discovered and deported to their country of origin — where at best, they may have family to take them in, and at worst, nothing at all.

Yet people make the journey anyway, because the dangers they face are preferable to the lives they leave behind.

Some are fleeing cartel violence; some are trying to send money home to their children; some are attempting to reunite with family already in the United States.

Regardless of the conditions, people will cross.

I saw the clearest evidence of human passage during the water-drop hike. On our second day, we traveled into the desert with Tucson Samaritans, a humanitarian group, to leave jugs of water and canned food along known migration paths.

Along the trail, we found 16 empty water jugs, a torn blanket, discarded cans, shredded clothing, and part of a broken rosary — quiet signs that someone had passed through and lived.

An hour and a half of my time leaving simple supplies could mean survival for someone else.

And that is where our responsibility comes in as Lasallians.

Even within the legal system, which often feels cold and mechanical, I saw people trying to act with care — judges who treated the defendants with dignity while carrying out laws they did not write. The system is overwhelmed and understaffed, yet they continue to work each day to make the process a little kinder — trying to humanize a deeply dehumanizing process.

As Lasallians, we are called to treat everyone with the same empathy — have “Respect For all Persons” and “Concern For the Poor and Vulnerable.” Though this trip gave me a deeper understanding of the humanitarian crisis at the border, the compassion it emphasized was not new to me.

What I learned is how those values are meant to be lived, at La Salle and beyond. Compassion does not have to be grand to matter. Here, at home, we can help.

There are organizations, like the Portland Immigration Rights Coalition, that support people going through this and offer real, immediate aid. Register to vote, get out and protest — whatever issue you choose to devote your time to, your voice and the pressure you apply can both directly and indirectly shape what is possible.

And perhaps most importantly, talk to people. Seek out the other side — “El Otro Lado.”