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At a tour of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector station, I watched a dozen monitors as cameras panned locations across the Valley, river or fence always in view. I forgot to write down how many thousands of tons of illegal drugs were seized, but it was more than I can really conceive. I stood in the weapons room and took aim through the holographic sight of a fully automatic rifle. In the complete dark, I squinted through the lens of a night vision scope and through the viewfinder of thermal imaging goggles. I learned more than 200,000 "undocumented subjects" were apprehended in the 2012 calendar year, that just in our area. Many of those were the same people, counted multiple times.

And then I saw the faces. The real faces of those undocumented people who had been apprehended in our area the last 24 hours or so. Agents bring them in and transport them out around the clock. Those being held are divided into four groups, kept in cinder block rooms with cement benches- women and children, juveniles, men from Mexico, and men from everywhere else. Some of their faces appeared blank, tired and dazed. Some appeared resigned, just waiting for whatever was to come next. A few, mostly young men, looked straight ahead, almost defiant, seemingly unafraid. A older Cuban woman, most likely someone's grandma, sat to be interviewed, her face downcast and worn. She was detained earlier in the day at the airport, her visa expired. Through thick-paned glass, we looked at them, and they looked at us.

Eventually, most likely, most of those faces would be deported. Most everyone deported from our area gets flown to California, and escorted across the border, in an effort to discourage them from returning to the eastern side of the US/Mexico border. But, agents acknowledged that many DO return, some in as few as 3 days.

I respect the job these Border Patrol agents do, working long hours, often under-funded and under-manned, in difficult and frequently dangerous circumstances. I'm thankful for the work that they do to prevent terrorists and weapons and drugs from entering our country. And yet, I left sad. I know that there are no easy answers to immigration issues and I know that significant reform is necessary. But in all that debate, just as it was in the tour, it will be the faces that come to my mind. It will be the faces because I have known the undocumented personally and it is their stories that make the issue more than text of news stories and the rule of law for me.

It is the faces that cause me to remember, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, that Jesus "came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father." Because of the Gospel, those trusting in Christ "are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." That is the story that I want to tell here in my part of the Rio Grande sector.