54 Passports

We lined up plastic chairs in the front yard at Casa Unidos and watched families arrive with folders pressed close to their chests. One by one, they sat down with the Clerk-Recorder on Wheels to complete their passport application. On the surface it looked ordinary, like paperwork you might handle on a lunch break. Underneath, it felt like the ground was shifting for entire households.

For some people, a passport is about vacations and bucket lists. For many of our neighbors, this is one more piece of proof that a child belongs, that a family can travel in an emergency, and that there is a path toward a future that does not move every time a policy does. A passport can be the difference between feeling permanently temporary and beginning to feel rooted.

We submitted 54 passport applications that day. 34 were for children, and many of those applications came from parents who carry a very real fear of being separated from their kids. We still have 12 people on the waitlist from our last legal clinic and 39 more from this one, a sign of how many families are reaching for any tool that might help keep them together.

People did not just need someone to tell them where to sign. They needed reassurance, presence, and a witness who would sit in that fear with them. We talk about hesitation and so quickly chalk it up to laziness. What I saw that day was trauma, courage, and a deep love for families that kept people in those chairs until the last line was filled.

Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” That afternoon, the burden looked like stacks of forms and years of fear, carried a little more lightly because it was shared across one long row of plastic chairs.



Miriam Zuniga
Lead Facilitator/Adult Program Director