At 8 am this morning, citizens of McAllen were already lining the streets in anticipation for the city’s 4th of July parade. Inside the respite center just a block away, staff and volunteers were scrambling to make calls to maintain their flow of supplies and donations as drivers were cut off by the closed streets.

The irony of citizens celebrating the nation’s revolt for independence while non-citizens nearby were clambering to secure the same celebrated freedoms was not lost on us.

We’ve been in McAllen just four days, after two days of long hours on the road, and it already feels like longer. There is never a shortage of activity at the respite center, which receives around 500 people from the Ursula detention center a day. Dropped off by ICE at the bus station across the street, they’re then led by volunteers to the respite center where they receive hygiene supplies, clothes, meals, a shower, and hopefully a bus or plane ticket to their sponsors across the country.

I’ve had some conversations today with volunteers about the pride of being an American. Those of us who carry on in the American tradition of revolting against injustice scoff at the loaded concept of this our ‘land of opportunity’. But my great-grandfather believed in that promise when in 1906 at the age of 13 he stowed away on a ship and left Romania behind. He was just 20 years shy of the National Origins Act, making his ‘illegal’ emigration more or less legal. And he did it, as many immigrants did, to cultivate a better life for himself and his descendants.

I’ve heard similar stories from families today, and it makes me wonder at the different ways we might define ‘freedom’. To me, freedom is liberation. Freedom is the ability to self-determine free from systemic shackles. There is no freedom in this way for children and families locked in cages at concentration camps. But freedom can be relative. For some, freedom is escape from life-or-death conditions. Freedom is believing in a promise of opportunity, even if it’s kept out of reach, because that belief is enough to make the next day worth living.

But we know that it’s not enough, and that’s why for those of us who know the America beneath the promise, it’s our duty to create a nation where freedom is liberation. That is the new promise that we must deliver on, even if it’s kept out of reach. That is an Independence Day we can celebrate.