Man of the Year

by Nazbanoo Pahlavi
Carnegie Mellon Today, July 2008


A few hundred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descend under the buzz of a helicopter. Nearby streets are blocked off. The target is a New Bedford textile factory that has federal contracts to produce camouflage uniforms for soldiers in Iraq. The agents expect to find about 400 undocumented immigrants, who will be questioned and detained. An hour after the raid begins, the local police chief tips off Marc Fallon (HS'92), a clergyman and advocate for the Mayan community.

Although Fallon considers his Spanish second rate despite the years he committed to his Hispanic ministry, he knows those seamstresses, and he knows their hearts. And he knows that many of the parishioners struggled through civil war in Guatemala and won't answer to any man in uniform who questions them about the whereabouts of their children.

The law-enforcement officials won't divulge names of those taken away, so Fallon and another pastor, Richard Wilson, figure out who didn’t come home. They determine that 121 children are left behind.

The pastors share their list with advocacy agencies, and a community-wide effort takes root. A temporary shelter is created in the basement of Wilson's church. Community college students volunteer to help. So do the YMCA and area lawyers. And an investment banker in Boston, Mass., even matches bail bonds for about 40 of the detained migrants. "People simply decided to trust one another," says Fallon.

Most of the detained caregivers were reunited with their children within two weeks. For their humanitarian work on behalf of the Mayan community and the 361 undocumented workers detained after the March 6, 2007, raid, Fallon and Wilson were co-selected as Man of the Year by The New Bedford Standard-Times.
—Nazbanoo Pahlavi (HNZ'03)