Daughter of Charity Sr. JT Dwyer displays a T-shirt hanging in the LCWR Region XII: Family Detention booth, one of the exhibitors at the assembly. In English on the other side, the shirt says: “My name is Jesus. I have no papers.” (GSR photo / Dawn Cherie Araujo)

“People who don’t live on the border, they’ve read in the papers or on the Internet that women are being kept in prison-like facilities with their children,” Sr. JT Dwyer, a Daughter of Charity from San Antonio, said. “But they don’t always understand that it’s against our own laws and policies in the United States.”

Global Sisters Report – U.S. sisters recommit to ending family detention 

It’s right in our backyard,” Sr. JT Dwyer, a Daughter of Charity from San Antonio, told Global Sisters Report SR. “We deal with border issues day in and day out.”

“We’ve heard the cry of our sisters imprisoned simply because they sought life for their children and safety in our land,”  Providence Sr. Jo Ann Showalter, chair of the Global Concerns Committee, said to the LCWR membership body. “But there’s still much do be done until all the women and children are released and cared for.”

Dwyer, whose post-retirement ministry — through the Interfaith Welcome Coalition — is aiding women both during and after their detention, spent the three days before the vote on the resolution handing out information on family detention in the assembly’s exhibition hall, hoping, she said, to educate sisters from other parts of the country on the severity of the issue.

After the vote, Providence Sr. Jo Ann Showalter, chair of the Global Concerns Committee, asked sisters to participate in a justice action by calling, writing or tweeting President Barack Obama with an imperative: End family detention.

“Why are these women incarcerated? Why were they forced from their homes in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala?” Sr. Ann Scholz, a School Sister of Notre Dame and LCWR’s associate director for social mission, offered to Global Sisters Report as examples of what a systemic approach to detention takes into consideration. “Why is the United States government so convinced it needs to hold these women and young children in prison-like conditions? What is it that creates the violence and poverty in the northern triangle of Central America?”