Montana Viewpoint: Froid sets an example

When I think of the animosity that we Americans (all of us the children of immigrants) feel about newly arrived immigrants, I am reminded of how longtime residents in a community feel about other Americans moving into their area.

If it happens to be just one or two folks moving in, the feeling against them is minimal. If it is a whole bunch of people coming into a locality, such as happened to Montana during Covid, the reaction to the strangers is not so welcoming. 

The first thing that occurs is that in order to make them less than human and less like us we assign to them negative characteristics that they might not even have. If we don’t like people from California then everyone who moves to Montana comes from California, which is not accurate. We assume that they will want to change the culture of our state to that of the state they just left. They will change our area for the worse. We scapegoat them as a group.  

And then we meet them and find out that, as individuals, they are fine and decent folks who in some way want to contribute to our community. Our opinion toward them as individuals changes, but we don’t change our opinions about the group. 

Last January, when the Border Patrol “detained” Roberto Orozco-Ramirez of Froid, Montana (which is just about on the North Dakota border) the 200 or so citizens of Froid rallied around him. The Border Patrol was within their rights, Roberto was not in the U.S. legally. 

But he had been in Froid for 10 years and ran a diesel repair shop. He was hard working, his kids went to school there, he was a Little League baseball coach and supported the Froid-Medicine Lake Red Hawks sports teams. In fact, he was not much different from anyone else in Froid except that he had a Spanish sounding accent. 

He was liked, he was trusted and he was valued as a member of the community. He was seen as a person, an individual, and not just a faceless member of a group of darker skinned people. 

But the Border Patrol had handled the situation in the most ham-handed way possible. First, they did not contact the sheriff of Roosevelt County with whom they had worked many times in the past. He found out that they had their eyes on Roberto through rumor and social media. When the sheriff contacted the Border Patrol they told him they were going to bring in an out-of-county SWAT team to take Roberto into custody. It seemed from social media that the citizens of Froid might be willing to have a stand-off with the Border Patrol if they detained Roberto, so the sheriff took him into custody to prevent an incident and to protect Roberto. The sheriff would then hand Roberto over to the Border Patrol. 

Whatever understanding for dignified transfer of custody the sheriff thought he had with the Border Patrol was not honored and the Border Patrol came to the jail in Wolf Point and took him. After the arrest, the community supported Roberto, raised money for him, found him a lawyer, and when a federal judge released him from custody last month, welcomed him back to Froid with open arms. Roberto still has to go to court to address the issue of not having proper documents, but he is at home with his family and repairing tractors for the farmers of Roosevelt County. 

It seems strange to me that we are willing to condemn people simply because they are members of a group we don’t like, but we are not willing to change our opinion of the group once we find that there are good people in it.  

I want to express my thanks to the people of Froid for their sense of honor and justice. 

Jim Elliott served 16 years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator. He lives on his ranch in Trout Creek.