AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Why This Journalist Profiled a Jesuit for The New Yorker with Jack Herrera

A couple of weeks ago, The New Yorker magazine published a fabulous profile of a Jesuit priest: Fr. Brian Strassburger, SJ, who lives in a Jesuit community that’s serving migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The piece went deep into Fr. Brian’s vocation story and how he wound up at the border as his first assignment after ordination to the priesthood. The article is also theologically rich, politically astute and paints a vivid picture of the harsh reality the migrants the Jesuits accompany are facing every day. The author of the story is a freelance reporter named Jack Herrera whose work on immigration, among other topics, has appeared in places like The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Times. Jack is our guest today. In reporting the story, Jack spent hours and hours with Fr. Brian and his fellow Jesuits in their ministry. Host Mike Jordan Laskey wanted to know what Jack learned from his experience: What most surprised him as he accompanied the Jesuits on both sides of the border? What stories and research got left on the cutting room floor? How did the project come to be in the first place, and why was The New Yorker interested? If you have read the story already, we hope this conversation will be a helpful supplement to what made it onto the page. If you haven’t read the story yet, we can’t recommend it highly enough. “The Betrayal of American Border Policy”: https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-betrayal-of-american-border-policy Jack Herrera: https://x.com/jherrerx Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, where Fr. Brian serves: https://www.jesuitscentralsouthern.org/our-work/del-camino/ How Jesuits Accompany Today’s Holy Families on the Border: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85U1B3zECU4 www.jesuits.org/ www.beajesuit.org/ twitter.com/jesuitnews facebook.com/Jesuits instagram.com/wearethejesuits youtube.com/societyofjesus www.jesuitmedialab.org/

Duration:: 39m
Broadcast on:: 28 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

(upbeat music) From the Jesuit Media Lab, this is AMDG. I'm Mike Jordan-Lasky. A couple of weeks ago, I read one of the best profiles of a Jesuit priest I've ever encountered. The subject was Father Brian Strasperger, a young priest who lives in a Jesuit community that's serving migrants on the US-Mexico border in Texas and the Mexican state of Tamilipas. The piece went deep into Father Brian's vocation story and how he wound up at the border as his first assignment after ordination to the priesthood. The article is also theologically rich and politically astute. It paints a vivid picture of the harsh reality the Jesuits' migrant friends are facing every day. You might expect to find a long article on this topic in a publication like America Magazine or in a diocesan newspaper, but this profile was published in The New Yorker, one of the most influential magazines ever. The author of the story is a freelance reporter named Jack Herrera, whose work on immigration, among other topics, has appeared in places like The Atlantic and The LA Times. Jack is my guest today. He spent hours and hours with Father Brian and his fellow Jesuits in reporting the story and I wanted to ask Jack about the project. What most surprised him as he accompanied the Jesuits on both sides of the border? What stories and research got left on the cutting room floor that's still valuable? How did the project come to be in the first place and why was The New Yorker interested in investing so much in this story? If you have read the story already, I hope our conversation will be a helpful supplement to what made it onto the page. And if you haven't read the story yet, I can't recommend it highly enough. We'll put the link in the show notes. You can subscribe to AMDG wherever you get podcasts and thanks for joining us. Jack Herrera, welcome to AMDG. Thank you so much for taking the time. How are you? - I'm doing good, yeah. Thanks for having me on the show, Mike. - Yeah, absolutely. Your piece came out in The New Yorker a few weeks ago which was titled The Betrayal of American Border Policy was I think your first piece in The New Yorker. And so first of all, congratulations on publishing there and just really a really wonderful piece of journalism profile of Father Brian Strasburger and some of his Jesuit brothers and the migrant folks they've met in their work on the US-Mexico border. So I'm excited to ask you about how that story came to be and what you learned and what maybe got left out from the final printed version that still is interesting. So maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself and your own work and background and your interest in these topics. - Yeah, thanks, Mike. Yeah, so I'm a freelance journalist. I've worked for as a national correspondent for LA Times and a staff writer for Texas Monthly and I spent a lot of my career reporting on both sides of the US-Mexico border and reporting on immigration in Mexico and the United States in the last couple of years I've reported from meatpacking towns in Iowa to Ray Nelson, Mexico with Father Brian. And I think while reporting on the policy or sort of the economic and political impact of immigration so that's right about, I think that what I really push about this story is that it's gotten more, it helps me get to measure a deeper interest in covering immigration which is the effect it has between our ears, the way that the mass movement of people historically right now changes the way we think about ourselves and about other people. And Father Brian Strasburg or somebody who's been really transformed by the fact of immigration, by the fact of migration, the fact of being in movement. And so it was great to be able to talk with him and see how that transformation took hold. - Yeah, I mean, it's like an issue, like as a political issue or as like a one line thing, it seems like it is, if not the leading issue, say in our presidential election, one of the top few which feels like, you know, kind of unusual, at least in recent history, but it's really come to the fore in this way. And so I think we can often so often like reduce that issue to like those sound bites. And even like what seems to be acceptable in political dialogue around migration has changed. And but it doesn't often like, I don't know, and I think it sometimes forgets that there are, these are people, human beings that we're talking about. - Yeah. - And so as you've studied that and like again, using these stories and story of Father Brian and others there to kind of dig into these big thorny political issues, how did you come to know him initially? Where did the idea for this story come from? Like tell us a little bit about the backstory. - Yeah, so I actually, it was, to our opening scene of the article happened very naturally in that I was actually in Brownsville, Texas, covering Biden's visit to the border for the New York Times. And I've had a journalist friend, you know, colleague connect me with with with Brian and we were, you know, considering doing an interview. And instead what happened is throughout the course of the day as I sort of followed Biden around Brownsville wasn't on much to say like he, you know, went to a border patrol station and give a speech there to border patrol agents and local politicians and TV cameras. Throughout that whole day Brian was texting me photos of the masters giving him Ray Nosa, the people he was meeting, just giving me updates. And that contrast in my brain was pretty vivid. And we talked on the phone a few times after that. And I think that what made me realize that besides that contrast, why I wanted to spend more time with Strasburg or was something he told me when we were talking which is I spent a lot of time talking in shelters around on both sides of the border over the last eight years. And one of the things I hear most often is people saying like I'm burned out, I'm tired, like I don't know how much longer to keep doing this work. And I sort of assumed, I know Brian's been there for, you know, going on for years now. And I sort of assumed that he also felt that way. He's gosh, this is exhausting and it's just hope. I have to keep, I have to keep reminding myself that this is what we're doing. And so I asked him for another comment. How are you on a personal level, like how are you doing man? Like, you know, like imagine this is really hard because oh, I'm on fire with the mission here. I mean, you really heard it in his voice do that. It wasn't, it wasn't him being like, oh, this is what we're doing even though it's hard. It's like, I love doing this. Like this is what I want to be doing. And that really, that was eye-opening. That's where I'm like, okay, this is where it's, this is that open to reporting question. Which is like, what is going on between these guys a year? So what's going on that makes him so content and so happy to do something that I think for a lot of people would be at tribulation to do the sort of work that Father Brian's doing. - Sure. And then so just like even a little kind of logistically, if you have this idea, is that something then you start to pitch the places and see if there's an audience and like a chance at a publication that will kind of finance its existence or like, again, you could have written a 800 word like really short kind of essay about Father Brian. It turned into something like, you know, several thousand words, right? So yeah, what was like the process of like, from like an idea, a spark to like starting to kind of build it out into what it became? - Yeah, I mean, I think that I got to spend the time with it that I needed before pitching it because actually I spent some time talking, you know, just going back and forth with Brian a few times before the New Yorker actually as I was on call with some of their editors and they were asking for what's story ideas, things we could work on together. And one of the things I talk about with editors often is how to tell the story of immigration and more specifically tell a story of what's happening right now in the border in a way that unexpected or just can like get to readers attention and answer questions that they have. 'Cause I think that there's this sort of genre of border reporting where stories start to sound very similar. And that's because a lot of experiences are similar, right? And I think there's a lot of utility and value in telling these stories. But if you have every story, start to start with like, this person had a very hard journey, was leaving very hard circumstances and was treated very poorly on the border, you know, that we've heard that story before. And that's a shame. That's like, it's that, I mean, Brian even said this, like we're bad at noticing each other. I think the fact that like we're familiar with that experience means that we can sort of anonymize it instead of like looking at a person experiencing that, we're thinking more at the general phenomenon. And I think that that's a problem for journalists to solve, which is how to get a new perspective or new way of telling the story so that people remember that it's current, it's happening, it's a physical reality at every minute. And so that was the, that was, I thought the useful way of using Strasburger, sort of a new perspective, enters do some new questions, which is this isn't just about politics or policy or are abstracted political obligations. It's also about like, do we have, do we have personal obligations here? And Brian was, it has a real expansive ability to answer that question when he asked like, oh, do I have personal obligations that people showing up in the border? He was in a place in his life and sort of his own sort of personal journey where he could answer that question in extreme. He could say, yes, I do and actually it demands that I, I make massive transformations in my own life to satisfy the zone. It was something that most of us won't do. And so that became, that became an opportunity to tell the story in a different way, to tell that story about what our commitments are, what our obligations are. And then the other thing actually is just like how useful his eyeballs are. Like his perspective, the fact that he got to the border, his first assignment in the Jesuits right after finishing formation, right after taking his final vows, a couple months after Biden took office. And so you have these two men dealing with the same issue of immigration on the border over the last three years in different ways. Yeah, I think actually the original headline I pitched this story to the New Yorker with was two Catholics on the border because Biden, as my lawyer reported, is very connected with his own Catholic faith. I think it's known to carry a rosary around. And during this campaign, it really talked about immigration as a moral issue. Using a lot of Catholic language, to describe that this sort of sense of like, our obligations to one another, it's good for our soul to be welcoming. And so that contrast or that juxtaposition was really interesting for me. Sure. You mentioned, again, having a lot of time to kind of be there and to kind of embed yourself, that comes through, I think, in terms of getting to know Brian and the other Jesuits there and some of the stories of families. And then your interviews with people who know Brian's obviously a huge amount of work. So can you tell us a little bit about the process? When you kind of decided you're going to pursue this that just say, all right, can I just like hang out and follow you around and talk to folks for a few days or a few weeks, or how did that work? Yeah, I think it's endearing talking to Brian in those early phase because I think he really wants to get the work of the mission that they have down there out there. He does want that to be known. He wants the experience of the migrants coming through the shelters and who he's meeting in their masses. He really wants that to be known. He wants it to be harder for us to ignore that, I think. But as you can expect, that sort of a priestly humility, I do think he felt a little bit like, oh, boy, do I want to profile written about me? Do I want to be the center of attention here? I don't think it was-- I hope it wasn't a hardship for him. But it was sort of that conversation about-- and he answered the right questions early on, too, which was like, OK, what is the interest here and what stories are we bringing to readers? And I think that we both have the same idea that-- I think it's really interesting to talk about Brian. It was obviously a profile of him. But the ability, especially I think that we got some specific stories about migrants' experiences, especially the man who has just been well, that Brian and I spent some time talking to during one of the masses, then a sale. And we got to bring that into the story. And I think there's a new way of bringing that experience in. So people who maybe don't want to read a migration story are maybe interested in a man's attraction or investment in the location of being a priest or a calling to be a cleric. And so maybe you're reading that story. And then halfway in, now you're suddenly in an immigration story trying to understand what's going on there. And vice versa, too, right? People who want to read an immigration story but maybe aren't really interested in the role of religion in daily life or even just ethical questions, which is-- I think that's not a very big part of American life. The idea of a personal ethic, a personal morality, we tend to think, transfigure that onto mass politics. So our obligations are what it means to be a good person. It comes down to how we vote or even just how we think about things instead of what we're doing. And so I think that Brian Strasburg, your own ideas of what he needs to do to be a good person or what the crisis of immigration means for him personally, I think is a provocative story to tell. So you mentioned again, so that kind of first conversation that sparked the idea of going deeper was the sense that he didn't express burnout but was on fire and not burning out for the mission. OK, what's going on here? So you again had that idea and then started pulling at threads and just curious, again, in your reporting process, what kind of surprised you? Other times when you ended up changing a direction or shifting focus or as you pursue something, again, you're asking questions and that was lead to more questions and maybe you end up going in different directions. So I'm just curious about, yeah, that process for you of kind of teasing out where you go from there. Yeah, I mean, I think that the question I landed when I first, you know, flew down to Bransville and went to Masses with Brian. One of the first questions I had was what explains this difference, the fact that the rest of the country-- in 2020, there was a high water mark for sympathy for my grants, like polling found that people wanted to welcome more people, wanted better treatment for immigrants, more treatment for migrants, like the pathway for citizenship, et cetera, et cetera. And that crater where now all that-- that was the highest mark it's been, potentially in American history. And in the last four years, it's now at a 25-year low, like people do not want immigrants in the country, want a tougher border policy, want more people deported. Just across the board, it's been a total flip-flop. And so the question was, why didn't-- why did the rest of the country's opinion change so much when, if anything, Brian's only got more expansive, wanted to welcome more people? And so I think that that's what gets me to thinking about-- and I really started thinking about this when Brian-- I asked him about how he thinks he's able to be hospitable without burning out. And he said, like, well, hospitality is a habit. It's a practice. And it was like blowing on like a dusty book, like there's some Aquinas I read in college back in the back of my head. I'm just thinking about the fact that doing the right thing is difficult, but the more you do it, it becomes easier. And that's not even a spiritual observation as much as just a psychological one. The idea that the more you work on something, the easier it becomes. And I think that that really made me think that even if-- even I think as the countries become more-- and I'm using this word, not even as a value statement, but just again as an observation, but more xenophobic, more unwilling to deal with immigrants with newcomers, there's a psychological mechanism there. It's not just political. I think that people are-- it's an emotional reaction when you don't want immigrants in the country. And I think it's a emotional reaction you do. And I think that the story at first had been a really broad political story about Biden's border policy versus what people on the ground are seeing. And spending more time with Brian and spending more time reporting. What surprised me is how much I became very interested. And this is a very personal story is a question of a personal ethic, rather than a question of a broader politics or a broader policy program. So one of the things you did with Father Brian was go to some of the masses that he and his brother, Jesuits, celebrate there. So again, folks who are on the move who are in camps and they kind of show up there and make a chapel as best as they can, just really just often in the open and just offer those things. And I think you write about how this is a unique thing that clergy can offer for Catholics or people who are interested in attending a mass, is that they can do that that maybe no one else can. And so can you just describe what that experience was like and kind of what you noticed and saw kind of being there? You do describe it in the story. But yeah, just what are your memories from kind of being at some of those masses? Yeah, I think the first mass in Reynosa at Casa de Migrante, this is the first one I saw where the three clerics, they pull up in their minivan. And all these kids run up like screaming and laughing and excited to see them. I think like Brian opened the door, the side door of the minivan and three girls just like jumped up and immediately started climbing him like he was a jungle gem. And another like little boy got in the driver's seat, you know, was like playing with the wheel. And I mean, it was adorable. And so then he basically like literally has kids like hanging off of him and laughing and obviously know him. And he walks that through and he's like talking to people, asking questions. A lot of people who like come up to him and he, you know, have been there for weeks or months and he asked them about where they are, how they're doing or how they slept last night. And as he's doing these asking these questions, he's helping lift a big lectern and move it to the front of the room, which is going to serve like an altar, putting out, you know, laying out a tablecloth, helping chatting with people about what the readings are for that day and sort of pointing out what who's going to read when. But basically doing the work of getting, not just getting a mass ready, but yeah, creating a chapel. Like there's a big sort of open area, almost like an open air lobby in the shelter. It's like a tin roof over the top that they clear out and line up chairs which become pews and you've got the lectern up front. And slowly it sort of turns into a church and people fill up the chairs. Some people sit around the edge of the room who aren't interested in the mass or just are basically or maybe curious, but not actively participating. And it was, I mean, that was just this interesting behind the scenes, look, like I'm, I think the times I have, I have attended a Catholic mass, you know, you really show up in. Not only is it all kind of set up and ready to go, like you have this whole church around you and you have, it feels like a very solid thing and seeing the mass come together, making do with what you have. It really, I mean, I think I started thinking man about something that Brian and I talked about later, which is that his experience in this ministry is, P.C. is a lot of it reflected in when he reads about the early church, you know, like basically when people were, you know, back to the time of St. Paul, right? Like when people, like that, this is what Christianity, this is what Catholicism looked like, which was sort of these inf, not informal, but I guess like these gatherings of people that you didn't have these big established cathedrals and enormous churches you were making do with what you had. And that, that, yeah, it was a vivid, vivid tableau. I think one of the things I remember most from that first mass and really gave me goosebumps is the masses in Spanish, but there are a lot of Haitian, Haitian Crayel speakers there. Joe Noya, one of the priests that he's in formation, adjacent formation in the ministry, he, he's actually, seems like he's pretty good at Crayel. And so he's able to chat with the boys, definitely still learning. But so there's like, you know, it's not like they ignore the Haitians at all, like not at all, but it is harder to participate in the mass, but you don't understand what's being said. And so at one point, they started the Eucharist and I saw all these, these group of Haitian women, like there's like a switch flip, but that's my cue. And they all sort of gathered to the side with a microphone and started singing a Haitian prayer song. I think it was, I'm forgetting that. I think it was Du Poussaint, but it's basically like a really beautiful hymn and hearing like this sort of, yeah, like this chorus of people again, you know, from different parts of Haiti, different experiences. Some had lived in South America for a long time. Some of them were recent from the island, but sitting together, standing together, singing the song, very excited to be participating in this mass. You know, I don't even know, like, I don't even know if all of them were religious or Catholic, but the fact that like, oh, we all know this song, we can sing and we can participate in this, like that, the enthusiasm is really infectious and it gave me, gave me, it was very moving. I, I, I, it was, that's like something I'll remember for a long time. - Hmm. So again, with all this time and the experiences you had, there's always so much that doesn't make it into the final article, right? I mean, your own research and his own story, the story of the people, the, again, clearly, so deeply researched. So I'm wondering what are like some of those details that were like the hardest ones that you had to leave out or stories that, again, if you had unlimited space, you would, you would want to tell. - Yeah. The first one that comes to mind is one I didn't, I didn't witness, but Brian told me about, which is in the humanitarian respite center on the other side of the border. So people just crossed, normally they're very often they're entering the silent process at that point, but he meets people who are literally sleeping on a floor, but, you know, Matt's in the shelter as they're waiting for their buses or their planes to get us from the country. And a Chinese woman, like a, comes up and sort of like, you know, makes it clear she wants to talk, so people have Google Translate on his phone and they chat back and forth and she goes, "Are you a priest?" And he goes, "Yes, I am." And she sort of turns around, like walks away and then comes back a few moments later with like, you know, a young man, like a, you know, her son, who she's holding, you know, by the shoulders and hands, and hands, Brian, this children's book, you know, they're very clearly well loved, they've been traveling with it. And then over Google Translate explains like, we're Christians, like we left China because we couldn't practice our faith there. And he looked at the children's book and it's a children's Bible, you know, it's like sort of illustrated stories and this is what they have. And he explains like, oh, you know, you're welcome to attend the mass, like, you know, we're about to have one. And she gets excited and sees her eyes sort of, you know, she's very interested. But then she says like, can you tell me what to do? Like I've never, I've never attended a mass before. And then again, like I'm, I think that I am a classic, you know, millennial raised Catholic, you know, like, I don't, I'm not a, I'm not a particular religious person. I'm really, I'm really moved by a lot of Catholic teachings and moral philosophy, but I'm not, I don't think a faith is the most important part of my own life. It's not, not part of my life, but it's not the thing I think about most often. And here it's stories like that. And then more, more it seems like seeing the Haitian sing, the song, like seeing people like, like line up, like to like to be blessed with holy water after these masses, like just realizing that like this is, this is the most important part of so many people's lives. And for this woman, it was enough for her to like cross half the world, cross the Pacific Ocean, you know, cross the border to try and be able to practice to do what she was doing in that shelter to attend this mass, to, to live her faith. That, yeah, I wish that I'd been able to get that story in, but I think that that was just one of so many different, incredible little anecdotes Brian had to tell and things that I saw too, that like, yeah, as you said, got left on the cutting room floor. - And like you mentioned, like migrants so often, like the stories are very similar that we read about, you know, the difficult time, which ends up kind of making folks feel anonymous and that it's not again about an individual person in front of you, but this phenomenon. And I also think about like Catholic priests talk about another group of people that is like, I don't know, there are all kinds of cultural like received beliefs about what that means in today and even like what young priests today are, again, you've seen as like super traditionalist perhaps and maybe politically quite conservative and it becomes a caricature as well. And so I'm wondering, are you good for you, someone who is not like a Jesuit, obviously not in the Jesuit world entering into it, getting to know Brian seeing his story as you describe it, like his own transformation, what did that do for you in terms of like your reflection on the, again, the location, who choose to do this countercultural thing today, you know, to be a celibate Catholic priest. - Yeah, anyway, putting it, yeah. I think, I mean, one of the first things that Brian and I talked about is I realized that he, you know, his idea of what the priesthood was like early in his life is basically what mine was going in and having these conversations with him, which is he says that I just thought that these men who receive a message from God, it's like, "Hey, I need you, I need you to serve." And sort of a solemn value take and it's across your bear. Like it's a very hard thing to do, but it's because you have such a strong calling that you're willing to do that, you're willing to take on that weight. And I think that's something he admired, but he was like, he said, when he was, you know, younger teenager, even a young man, just like that. Yeah, I knew that wasn't me. Like I didn't have that sense of like, like, you know, Gabriel hadn't appeared to me and said, "This is what she shall do." - Right. - And so then it was later when he was on a, with the actually Augustinian, working with the Augustinian volunteers in South Africa, where he said it was, he was working at a hospice. So he was, I mean, seeing people die pretty much on a daily basis, like really being confronted with the, you know, the sort of extremis of the human experience, this really, you know, really hard experiences. But he was also, he was living in a prayerful community with other people where not everyone was religious, but he would, you know, if they would pray together and more than that, they'd sit around and sort of talk about the meaning of what they were seeing, how they were feeling. And he said he wasn't dating at the time. So it was a, you know, it's a celibate experience too. And that's when he started to realize he said, he went and talked to a priest, speaking spiritual direction. And the priest asked him, like, why is he speaking spiritual direction? And it was almost like somebody else's voice answering, Brian told him, like, one thing about becoming a priest. And I think that was, this was really revelatory for me that the decision for him to become a priest wasn't, it wasn't about making a sacrifice. And I think importantly, it wasn't political either. It wasn't like a sort of like, I need to instill these values and the people. It was a, this is a really beautiful way to live. And I think I'm gonna thrive the most if I live this way. Like, I think that this is gonna be best for me. Not to say it was a self-physician, but just like realizing that like, oh, this really speaks to me, like this lifestyle, like this is the things that matter the most to me or the things that matter the most to the men who decide to become priests. And he'd go into a dress-up high school. So I think that the sort of path of the Jesuits was clear. But I also think that, I mean, this is something that also got left on the cutting room floor, but the Jesuits transformation over the last 100 years or so. And I think like I really, I spent a lot of time reading about Berro Rube and his influences as a, what is it? Superior general, is that the? - Yeah, yeah. I think the specific story, you know, Rube's life that I think just scribed the sort of direction the Jesuits had taken. And I know this is an oversimplification. It's a complicated road, continues to be. But this experience that Rube had in Hiroshima, he has the atomic bomb blow up over his head. You know, a hillock protects him and like leads, you know, some of the chapel intact. So he's alive and the city's inflamed. And he turns to the gather Jesuits, like the people there and he says, we're going, we're going out into the city and we're going to bring people back and this chapel, this half destroyed chapel is now a field hospital. And we're going to take care of people. And I think that it's really clear in Rube's biography that that was the sort of transformation in his sense of what the goal of the mission was, of the Jesuit missionaries was in the 20th century, that this wasn't just about evangelism. This was about helping people, like actively being a source of aid. And I think, I do wonder, I don't know for sure, but I do wonder if that's specifically what Pope Francis thought about in some of his earliest interviews when he explained, like, I want the church to be a field hospital. Let's heal the wounds. So we could talk about everything else, but let's first we need to heal the wounds. And I do wonder, I know that Rube was a mentor for Francis. And I wonder if that was maybe even specific images of the field, of an actual Jesuit field hospital in 1945. And so that was really interesting to me because I think that that is Brian's, his calling to the priest to a more specifically, the Jesuits was the sense that I want to be, the type of priest I want to be, why he wanted to be in Jesuits is, I think he's a worldly guy, he wanted to go to different parts of the world. And, but I think more than that, he wanted to go where the need was and go be useful and go be helpful in the ways he could be. And it seemed like that he really understood that the Jesuits were the order who were offering that path for him a way to go be useful. - Since the piece came out a couple of weeks ago, I'm just curious about what kind of feedback you've gotten and what you've heard from folks or anything. Yeah, and the response to the piece that has been interesting. - Yeah, it's been really gratifying to talk to your responses from people who I think felt personally moved by the piece. And most often, I mean, I think a lot of people just hearing experiences of what people are going through on the border, I think was very moving to a lot of people or just affect or troubling. And that's the response I have gotten to my work before, 'cause I've reported a lot on hardships and migration. What was new that was having people like sort of affected by the question of like, what should I do with my own life? Like, what am I called to do? If I'm affected by this story and it makes me sad or it makes me upset, like, what's the next step? Like, it's not just about that feeling, it's about what do you do with it? I mean, I think for me that that's like, that's the part of Catholicism that I feel most tender about the sense that like, you know, we are called to do good works. Like we, you know, that is, there's a question. The moral status of your life is so much about what you do. And I really appreciate that. And I think that that really, that's part of why doing this story as a cat, you know, and making Catholic priests the center of the story was important to me because I think that he's living a life and is in a life position where when you ask the question, like, oh, I find it, I'm so troubled by this. The next question is, well, what am I gonna do about it? And for somebody who's like already a priest, like, there's no, there's no sort of limit, there's no asymptote, like, oh, maybe I'll go volunteer once a week or something like that. It's like, well, no, I'll transform my life. Like, I'll completely change. I'll completely improve. I'll move to Brownsville, Texas. I'll learn Spanish. I'll, you know, get, I'll spend a ton of time in Northern Mexico. I'll learn how to navigate these cities that are not safe cities at all and make do. And so that was, I think a lot of people that I've heard from there's great conversations to be a part of, right? Thinking like, you know, this really made me think of my own, like, sense of, I mean, vocation's a great word 'cause it's not just about my career. It's about like, what am I doing with, what are my projects or what's my mission with my life? Talking to people who were like that, it sort of pushed them to sort of asking those questions. And that was really, that's really gratifying. And that's sort of a smoth actually really haven't had to an article before, so that was new. And also hearing from other people, other priests and nuns and other people who are living religious life. And again, saying that, yeah, like, this is, there's a lot of different reasons people become priests. Like you said, but I think that the fact that this spoke to people's, their idea of why they've become a priest, why they've become, you know, men and women of the cloth, is because of the sense that this is a really good way to live. This is what works well for me. And I want to build my life around being of service to other people. And this is a great way to do that. But that was my first time I had an inbox that had been full of nuts and trees. - Is there anything we haven't touched on yet from the project or, again, other stories that you think are important to include, just give you a chance that there's anything else we haven't hit yet? - Yeah, I mean, it's in the article itself, but the sort of increased incidences of kidnapping that Father Brian is seeing, like, that's what I'm actually reporting for other outlets right now is trying to get into how industrialized the kidnapping racket is in Uranus, but also other towns along the border where immigrants who are showing up are being kidnapped and held for ransom as a sort of industrial line. Like, it's like you're taking to his house, you're lined up with a bunch of other people and everyone takes their turn being taken to a room where you're tortured on speakerphone with your family and that happens until they pay the ransom. And it's just, it's a business, you know, like you get the new people arriving on the bus every day and there's these actors in Reynosa, that seems to be the Gulf cartel, making a lot of money off of it from some of the more vulnerable people in the atmosphere. And I think that that, that again, like it was, it's demoralizing the journalist sometimes and just telling that story of what's happening. I don't, I mean, I think it will affect people, it can make, it's worth reporting on and we'll get people's attention. But I think that putting that story in this different profile of Brian Strasburg in a place like The New Yorker, I hope that it sort of defamiliarized or sort of made it, made that feel more stark and intense, made it feel a bit more human. And so that's, I think that's, I think I just wanna leave that with just like thinking of just, it is, it is just so hellish, what is happening on, in Northern Mexico, like the experiences people are going through. Trying to get to the border safety. And I think that really, I think like, really putting that front and center as we talk about immigration, I think 'cause often it's like remembering, it's remembering who the victims are, who the people being harmed most by our current immigration policy. It's, I mean, I think it's remembering where our eyes should be, it shouldn't be on, you know, like the most vulnerable, the most in danger are immigrants themselves, especially in a place like Reynosa. And so as we go about answering the questions of what should be done, there's a lot of different stakeholders, a lot of different problems to solve, but I don't think that that's friends then. I don't think like when we're talking about like Kamala Harris or Donald Trump are talking about like solving the border crisis or solving immigration. I don't think those are the people they're thinking of and the problem they're seeking to solve. And so yeah, thanks for asking anything we didn't talk about 'cause I want to take every opportunity to remind people that that is, I think that that needs to be a higher priority. I don't know why it wouldn't be the priority because we're talking about people being tortured and sexually abused on speaker phones with their family. I don't know what is more important than stopping after happening. - Well, Jack, thank you so much for coming on in the conversation and for the, really again, wonderful piece you published and for all the work you continue to do. Yeah, best of luck in your next stories and the rest of your reporting and we'll be following to see what you have to tell us next. So yeah, thank you so much again for the time. - Thank you, really good to be on the show. (upbeat music) - AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Media Lab, a project of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States based in Washington, D.C. The show is edited by Marcus Bleach. Our theme music is by Kevin Lasky. The Jesuit Conference Communications Team is Marcus Bleach, Eric Clayton, Meghan Leach, Becky Sindelar and me. Connect with the Jesuits online at Jesuits.org on Instagram at We Are The Jesuits, on X at Jesuit news and on Facebook at Facebook.com/jesuits. Sign up for weekly email reflections at Jesuits.org/weekly. The Jesuit Media Lab offers courses and resources at the intersection of Ignatian spirituality and creativity. If you are a writer, podcaster, filmmaker, visual artist or other creator, check out what we have going on at Jesuitmedialab.org. If you or someone you know might be called to discern a vocation to the Jesuits, connect with a Jesuit vocation promoter at be@jesuits.org. You can drop us an email with questions or comments about the show at media@jesuits.org. And subscribe to AMDG wherever you get podcasts, including iTunes or Spotify. And as Saint Ignatius of Loyola may or may not have said, go and set the world on fire. 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