Immigration Article of the Day: Messengers of Hope: Responding to the Voices of the Persecuted to Reverse the Erosion of Refugee Rights by Craig B. Mousin & Chris Inserra

Messengers of Hope: Responding to the Voices of the Persecuted to Reverse the Erosion of Refugee Rights by Craig B. Mousin & Chris Inserra

Abstract

The escalating erosion of refugee and asylum-seeker rights by nations that initially agreed to provide the humanitarian protections to those fleeing persecution frequently finds a passive world forgetful of the tragedy of the Holocaust that led to the Refuge Convention of 1951 and the US Refugee Act of 1980.   This article arose from a panel presentation the authors gave addressing the undermining of international and domestic law at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem as part of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center’s Solidarity Pilgrimage in November 2024.  As one response to this attrition, we proclaimed asylum seekers and refugees as what Pope Leo XIV calls “messengers of hope.” As such, they offer testimony that demonstrates the necessity for international protection when nations persecute their own constituents. At the same time, they also document the need for the resurrection of international and domestic law to protect not just asylum seekers but also the residents of the nation whose laws call for a fair asylum adjudication. Thus, not only are they messengers of hope, but they are also active agents of repair and restoration.

This article commences with a discussion of the development of refugee law and its erosion and then examines the Palestinian experience of forced expulsion and life under occupation since 1948.  It compares how the U.S. legal system addressed the claims of asylum-seekers with how international law addressed the issue of protecting Palestinian refugees.  Although nations enact civil law to protect human dignity and establish equality and liberty, when powers or authorities whittle away at its protections or capture its supposed guardians, law becomes a weapon to discriminate, detain, deport, and destroy individuals and groups.  This transformation of protection to rejection provides insight as to how the alleged universal declaration of refugee rights has failed to protect asylum-seekers and Palestinians, both in the diaspora and those remaining in Palestine and Israel. The chapter next addresses how asylees and refugees, in solidarity with activists, can work to restore the law and revitalize the goals of justice and equality.  Asylees and refugees provide evidence of the tragic consequence when the law fails to meet its humanitarian goals and pierce the impunity that permitted the human rights violations. Their testimony, moreover, calls all citizens to refute the public silence that permitted the breakdown of law and challenge the belief that national security outweighs human rights.   The article provides examples of testimonies in courts of law, work with NGOs to support vulnerable migrants and refugees, and protests to change government policies.  When that national debate involves interpretations of Christian Scripture, their witness as vulnerable migrants rebuts those who proclaim Christian nationalism that would build walls and detention centers that deny the dignity of the asylum-seeker and reminds the world that Jesus was a Migrant 4 Life who walked with refugees.  The chapter concludes with a call to join the messengers of hope--the refugee, the asylum-seeker, and the migrant--resist those who undermine international and domestic law and restore the protections the world made in the name of justice and human dignity.

This article is a full version of a shorter chapter in Sabeel's forthcoming book Pilgrimage Amidst Genocide.  (Fall 2026, www.sabeel.org).  The book will explore Sabeel's work over the last three years as it relates to pilgrimage, witness, and solidarity.