I have started looking at the sermons from our previous ministers. Here are excerpts from one Rev. Axel Gehrmann delivered on September 9, 2012. He titled it “A Secure Homeland.”  

“I knew that the United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per capita incarceration rate among industrialized nations. What I didn't know is that the eleven million so-called "illegal immigrants" in this country have little to do with the criminal justice system.

“Illegal immigrant" is misleading. It sounds as if we are dealing with criminals, But in fact, living in this country without appropriate documentation is not a crime, it is only a civil offense.

You would think this would be a good thing, You would think that because undocumented immigrants are not criminals, they would be afforded the same legal protections as all the millions of non-criminals in this country, You would think they would surely enjoy better treatment than criminals.

But here’s the catch: it turns out that those of us accused of a crime are granted more protections than those who are accused of a civil offense. If you are detained for a civil offense, you are not read Miranda rights, and you are not entitled to make a phone call, you are not allowed to contact an attorney. Once you are detained, your detention can drag on for days, or weeks, or months.

I knew we had the world's largest prison population. What I didn't know is that we also have the world's largest population of civil detainees. These are men and women who are not incarcerated because of a crime they committed, but who are detained. They aren't in jail, but they are still locked up, all the same.

We have the world's largest population of civilly detained people, but we don't have a system in our country to run civil detention, Civil detention centers are not subjected to accountability and oversight the way prisons are.

Many of them are privately run So, for instance, in Willacy County, Texas, thousands of men and women were held in ten circus tents, with no windows. People were supposed to be held for two or three days, but instead some were held for two years.

Maria Hinojosa, a former CNN journalist, visited that place, and said, “Imagine that this is a place where there was no clean drinking water. The water from the tap was sulfuric. So every time – imagine, every time in the desert in Texas in that tent, you'd be thirsty, you would have to go to the guard and ask for a cup to drink water. And maybe that guard would give you the cup, maybe not. No TV, no windows, no books. Warehoused.”

Hinojosa met the Jewish holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, Elie Wiesel. Talking in the hallway, he explained to her why it is important to question the use of the term "illegal immigrant." Don't use the term "illegal" when talking about immigrants, he said, because there's no such thing as an illegal human being. It's dangerous to use this term, Wiesel knew very well. He remembered when the Nazis declared the Jews to be illegal people. That was the beginning of the Holocaust. Six million men, women and children were first declared illegal, and then killed.

Over 11 million people live in this county as undocumented immigrants. This is not just an issue in Arizona or Texas, and in states that share a border with Mexico. This is an issue right here in Champaign/Urbana. Concerned citizens locally have been working to support our immigrant community. Locally, our police officers have been enforcing a so-called "Secure Communities" program, that was promoted as a way to identify and deport dangerous criminals "who pose a threat to public safety, such as aliens with prior convictions for major drug offenses, murder, rape, robbery, and kidnapping." However, in fact, the vast majority of individuals detained under the program were non-criminals. Here in Champaign County, 70% of those detained had no criminal record, but the impact on local families has been devastating.

Unitarian Universalists across the country are turning their attention to our country's immigration practices. "Immigration as a Moral Issue" is the way this effort is being framed, Congregations across the nation are educating themselves and finding ways to take action. 

In the wake of the terrorist attacks [September 11, 2001], we created a new government entity called the Department for Homeland Security, In order to more effectively protect us from terrorist activity, dozens of government agencies were reorganized and placed under its umbrella.

According to the for Homeland Security website, "The vision of homeland security is to ensure a homeland that is safe, secure, and resilient against terrorism and other hazards where American interests, aspirations, and way of life can thrive."

This is a worthy goal, for sure. But I wonder whether the way we have been going about attaining this goal has really been effective. Is our homeland more secure? Do we feel safe?