McAllen, Texas - More than 2,300 immigrant children have been separated from their parents after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy for border crossers. Though family separation practices have been cancelled through executive order, suffering has not.

A plea agreement spared Rodney Earl Sanders from the death penalty, which was opposed by both sisters' congregations and their families. Sr. Paula Merrill of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and Sr. Margaret Held of the School Sisters of St. Francis were nurse practitioners ministering to the poor in rural Mississippi when they were stabbed to death in 2016.

This story appears in the Seeking Refuge feature series. View the full series.

by Melanie Lidman

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Uganda has quietly absorbed a million South Sudanese refugees in the past few years. While challenges abound, the country's liberal policy toward refugees stems from its own recent tumultuous history.

• All the Seeking Refuge series stories can be found here.

Nancy Corcoran is a Sister of Saint Joseph of Carondelet (St. Louis Province). A New Englander by birth, her first degree was in political science. After college, she served as a lay apostle in Hawaii before entering the convent at a time when many women were leaving. She has taught Grades 3-12 in rural and urban settings, established literacy clinics in Alabama and Mississippi, and after graduate work at Harvard Divinity School ministered as chaplain at Regina Dominican High School in Chicago and Wellesley College in Massachusetts.