The Silence That Speaks: Commentary on the Lived Effects of Immigration Policy

By Elket Rodriguez
 

The lawn hasn’t been mowed. The gardener never showed up.

Behind our house, the construction site sits frozen — two homes never finished.

A car with no plates waits at the corner of the subdivision, parked too long, too still, like a quiet warning.

Above, a deportation flight slices through the blue sky as I run laps in the city park. This is what fear looks like in my community. It’s seen not always in the headlines, but in the absences, in the silences. In the things that no longer happen. In the margins.

Even immigration officers — the same ones we greet at the grocery store, whose kids go to school with ours — walk with a visible emotional weight. They carry the burden of a job that increasingly targets their own neighbors.

The man two houses down has not touched his yard in months. He used to wave. Now there’s a faded “For Sale by Owner” sign in front of his door. No one’s seen him. A friend, after 25 years in the US, sold his home and returned to Mexico, defeated by a country he once tried so hard to make his own.

Whole families stopped coming to church. No explanation — just empty pews.

We see children who no longer have their parents with them. We hear about families who won’t even go to the supermarket, out of fear they may not come back home.

We mourn the church that canceled Vacation Bible School, not because there weren’t volunteers, but because immigration agents were patrolling the neighborhood, and the church didn’t want to risk more children being separated. We grieve for the children who didn’t get the opportunity to run, play, sing or have fun during VBS. No sticky fingers reaching for juice boxes. No songs sung with abandon. No joy.

Baseball and soccer teams are thinning out. Fewer kids are signed up — so few that coaches are now merging age groups just to have enough players.

There’s an older Latina woman now selling flowers in front of the gas station. She wasn’t there before. She should be resting. She should be cared for.

The taco stand is closed. The barbershop still opens, but the barber who once cheered for Trump now avoids the topic — his undocumented parents are no longer safe under the policies of the man he supported.

This is not just political. This is deeply human. What we are living is not theoretical; it’s tactile — visible in the slowed heartbeat of our community, in the kids missing from the playground, in the uncut grass, in the homes left behind, in the silence at church.

We are not okay.

Although I am not an immigrant myself and I live with privileges many of my neighbors do not, the pain of my community runs through me. I don’t pretend to speak for them or to take a place that isn’t mine.

But I walk with them, I grieve with them, and I hear the echo of their fear in the silence that surrounds us. What I share comes from that closeness — not from a personal experience of persecution, but from standing near those who endure it.

Fear has reshaped our routines and rewired our sense of safety. What once felt like ordinary life now feels like something borrowed, something at risk of being taken.

And yet, our people still hope. They still love. They still gather in hidden ways, still pray, still sing to their children at night. The soul of our community has not died. It’s just hiding.

For now.

But we know this: a fearful people cannot remain silent forever. The silence may speak today, but one day, we will speak back.

This is what fear looks like in my community. Not always in the headlines, but in the absences, in the silences. In the things that no longer happen. In the margins.

— Elket Rodríguez is immigration advocacy specialist for Fellowship Southwest (fellowshipsouthwest.org) and global migration advocate for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. On behalf of both these roles, he participates in Como Nacido entre Nosotros (CNEN) a network of faith leaders who serve migrants across Latin America.

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