Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
For Teresa Todd, kindness was a crime.
Todd, the Jeff Davis County attorney and mother of four, was driving one February evening in West Texas when three young migrants flagged her down. Seeing that one appeared ill, she invited them to come into her car out of the cold.
As she was texting friends for advice, a sheriff’s deputy stopped and asked her to step out of the car. Todd spent almost an hour in a holding cell that night before she was released and became the subject of an ongoing federal investigation.
The question of whether to aid illegal immigrants at the border is difficult. Those who help them are essentially abetting a crime, however victimless.
Some have also argued that border aid only encourages migrants to embark on life-threatening journeys when we should instead try to route them through legal channels.
On the other hand, the preservation of life should ground our system of justice.
The particular loyalties and conflicts of our country in this moment will not last forever, but our law will always stem from that respect for human life, which defined our founding.
The answer to the question of whether to render aid to migrants should be clearer for private citizens than government agencies. While state entities have a sworn duty to the law that keeps them from sending mixed messages to migrants, everyday Americans like Todd face no such conflict if they choose to give water to the thirsty or invite the cold into their car.
Todd saw a problem and tried to solve it; it is unwise and unfair to yoke her natural human compassion to political and legal wrangling.
The officer who detained Todd acted with reasonable suspicion. We support greater security at the border, and Todd’s situation could rightly have been read as less than innocent. But, with the facts now known, we think it was plainly innocent. And it was also decent.
The migrants she helped are currently in holding in a detention center in Sierra Blanca.
With that, any criminal investigation or suspicion against Todd should cease; no harm, no foul.
Todd’s quick willingness to help the less fortunate embodies the American conscience, and as dwellers of the Friendly State, we could hardly cast a better mold for our values.
— The Dallas Morning News