We close our month-long Spotlight on June as National Immigrant Heritage Month with encouraging words from writer Michael Sean Winters, whose June 18th column is entitled: “Signs the Political Tide is Turning on Immigration.”  For that to be true, we must not let up, though.  Political tides are not governed by the moon, but by the strong and loud voices of a concerned citizenry.

Father Peter, our AFTDJ Founder knew this all so well – the cruelty of our official policies and actions, the imperative to speak out to bring about change – when he wrote the following seven years ago in the very same publication, the National Catholic Reporter, which just published the column from its staff writer Winters.

“His [President Trump] demeaning language needs to be named for what it is: racist, mean-spirited and a blatant denigration of the God-given human dignity of people who have experienced, generation after generation, unjust suffering due to unfair social, political and economic structures. Furthermore, his words lack any sense of Christian values, and they are diametrically opposed to the core values of Jews, Muslims and any other faith based in divine love. It is time to stand up and say to Trump, ‘Your values are not our values, and people are not commodities to be disposed of at your discretion.’”

Our first Immigration Spotlight piece, published on June 5, encouraged opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill Act because, among many draconian provisions harming the poor and marginalized, it would also further institutionalize those “unfair social, political, and economic structures” that Father Peter railed against in 2018.  That bill still pends in the Senate.

We still have time to heed Fr. Peter’s words and make a reality of the signs the columnist Winter sees.