“Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Book of Genesis does not record an answer to Cain’s question when God confronts him after Cain’s act of fratricide. It leaves the reader to decide in the reader’s own conscience. How would you decide?

An affirmative answer means caring for people who are suffering, a core value shared across faith traditions and points of view. Anything less is not fully human, and it is the personal encounter that always humanizes what can otherwise remain distant and abstract. In that spirit, I visited the home of Hugo Mejia and his family a few months ago.

Mejia’s story is well known from numerous news reports: When going to work at a construction site on a military base in Fairfield, he and a co-worker were handcuffed and taken to immigration detention, with Mejia held 100 miles away from his home in San Rafael. As I visited and prayed with Mejia’s family, their anguish at the separation was palpable — but so was their dignity and the power of their faith in the face of such great hardship.

During my visit, Mejia called his family from inside the immigration prison. I felt how much he missed his wife, Yadira Munguia, and their three children, and as his voice echoed over the phone, I could understand where the goodness of his family comes from. Mejia is a devoted husband and father, a churchgoer, and a construction worker. He volunteers at his children’s school and is a member of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. The detention of someone with deep roots in the community is a call for all of us to look beyond heated rhetoric and see the humanity of the most vulnerable members of our communities.

This week, Mejia will finally have the chance to go before a judge and make his case to be released on bond. The possibility that the pain of the Mejia family could be eased brings hope to many of us who have raised our voices for Mejia’s release. Indeed, our country has still not created a workable immigration process for people like Mejia, whose labor nevertheless advances industries that have created great wealth.

And here is a concrete, humanized example: Until now, no judge has ever given full consideration to the contours of Mejia’s life and his contributions to this country over these last 16 years that he has lived and worked here.

We are all our brother’s and sister’s keepers. This is simply another way of stating the Golden Rule, an equally universal ethical principle.

How should our society treat Mejia, and millions of other sisters and brothers like him? How would you want to be treated if you were in their situation? In a virtuous society — that is, one whose political, social and economic institutions allow all of its members to flourish — the answer to both questions is the same. Will we be such a virtuous society?

The decision is now before us. The character of our country will be defined by our answer.

Salvatore J. Cordileone is the archbishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.