HIAS Statement on Crash That Killed Migrants in Brownsville

Statement of HIAS President and CEO Mark Hetfield on today’s incident in Brownsville, Texas, where a driver plowed into a crowd of migrants, outside a facility that serves homeless people:

“We are shocked, and we are grieving the loss of those killed in today’s crash, which also left a number of other people injured. This mass killing may or may not be the result of the escalating dehumanization of people seeking protection in the United States, but it certainly coincides with that campaign of otherization. This must stop now. We must stop it. As a Jewish humanitarian organization founded more than a century ago on the moral imperative to welcome the stranger, and as an organization that works with displaced people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and around the world, we can’t be bystanders. HIAS stands in solidarity with our colleagues at Catholic Charities in Brownsville, the people we serve together, with our many other faith-based and civil society partners, and we are undeterred in our determination to work together for an America that welcomes the stranger, as our faith and American values command us to do.”