When you turn on the faucet in Flint, Mich., you don’t just get water — you also get the potent neurotoxin lead. And without a driver’s license, Flint residents are being refused bottled water from the city. So undocumented people have to search elsewhere for clean water, reports America magazine.
Deacon Omar Odette of Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish in Flint says that members of his parish have been arrested by immigration authorities for not having documentation.
"The [federal Department of] Homeland [Security] has come out and said they will not put undercover people in the distribution centers—but that's only the distribution centers, not the rest of the city," Deacon Odette told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview.
"They're picked up, hauled away, given a court date. That's really a big issue. It's not a minor issue, it's a major issue," he said. "The Border Patrol is only an hour and 10 minutes away from Flint" in Port Huron, which is separated from Canada by the St. Clair River, "and they come through quite a lot looking for people."
In response, Odette’s parish has become a water distribution center, and on March 16, he flew to Washington, D.C., as part of a delegation to attend a congressional hearing on the Flint water crisis with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and EPA administrator Gina McCarthy.
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