DIGNITY & JUSTICE

A Christian assessment of the immigration crisis at the United States’ southern border.

In her nonfiction debut, Dakin-Grimm draws on many years of experience as a lawyer, including six years as an immigration attorney, to help readers understand the current situation facing immigrants to the United States—particularly unaccompanied kids at the U.S.–Mexico border. Along the way, she diagnoses complications in the system and offers potential resolutions. Her study was prompted, in large part, by her personal feelings as a practicing Christian; in her “mostly white, affluent Catholic parish” in California, she writes, “I had never heard a Sunday homily that even mentioned the word ‘immigration,’ much less the phenomenon of these unaccompanied children.” Here, she presents details about these minors and their families and tries to explain why they risk so much in order to come to the United States. She also addresses how devout Catholics can approach the various issues that immigration raises. To do so, she provides a series of detailed profiles, using first names only; Gilberto, for instance, fled the violence of Guatemala’s MS-13 gangs and entered the United States in 2014, seeking asylum. However, Dakin-Grimm explains, the U.S. government “simply does not grant asylum to most of the people we know have suffered terribly, and who we believe to be genuinely fleeing persecution, poverty, terror, wars, famine, and atrocities.” Despite the odds, however, Gilberto eventually got his green card in 2017 and now seeks to become an American citizen. Through these and other stories, the author efficiently dramatizes the struggles of many such seekers, and she uses the accounts to help educate fellow Catholics on their broader implications.

“Jesus never permits us to weigh the value of [immigrants’] lives against other existing difficulties, to turn our backs, or to send them away,” she asserts. “Catholics may never do so, even if U.S. law allows precisely that response.” In polished, well-sourced prose, Dakin-Grimm expounds on the historical and theological roots of the Catholic ethos, tracing them back to St. Thomas Aquinas (“good is to be promoted and evil is to be avoided”) and continuing the throughline to modern-day popes, such as John Paul II; she quotes the latter’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor, which affirmed the existence of moral absolutes as well as their opposites: “certain specific kinds of behavior that are always wrong to choose.” Indeed, the most memorable parts of Dakin-Grimm’s book bracingly dig into such Catholic principles, and she’s refreshingly unyielding on the moral demands that faith places on the faithful: “Catholics may never legitimately conclude that decent suffering people…can be ignored or turned away.” The book also doesn’t flinch from events of the last few years, noting that the Trump administration’s policies resulted in “one of the darkest moments in modern U.S. history.” Throughout, her tone is empathetic and ethical, and some of her Catholic readers may feel chastised as they read. At the same time, they’ll be thrilled to see such a clear case for faith-based compassion.

A remarkably forthright and uncompromising exploration of Catholic conscience.