By Sara Burback
Our group lined up to sing as a birthday cake was carried from the kitchen. The lights were dimmed and the radio turned up to play “Feliz cumpleaños” as a young woman from Guatemala entered the room and was surprised to meet a group of strangers ready to celebrate her birthday. We had arrived an hour prior to tour the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen, Texas and learn about the community response to the influx of migrant arrivals to the center, where they would stay for a few days before boarding a bus to meet their American sponsors. When our six-person volunteer team from the interfaith dialogue group The Church Lab registered for the trip led by Texas Impact in July, the respite center was processing the arrival of over 700 migrants a day. Yet when we arrived, as a result of the Trump administration’s new Remain in Mexico policy, there were only three — one of whom was celebrating her birthday after giving birth the week prior.
In late January the Department of Homeland Security implemented The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)*, also known as Remain in Mexico, and enforcement began in mid-July at ports of entry in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, including Laredo and Brownsville. Under MPP and new asylum policies by the Trump administration, migrants seeking to claim asylum in the U.S. must first prove that they sought asylum in another country before arriving at the U.S. border. When they do apply to claim asylum in the U.S., they are first metered and receive a Notice to Appear in Immigration court in the U.S. Until the date of their hearing, they must remain in Mexico, vulnerable to kidnappings and extortions by local drug cartels in Mexico, where they struggle to find an attorney to represent their case.
Our group began its week-long trip of learning about the United States’ shifting immigration policies in Brownsville, Texas, a border city which lies across the Rio Grande River from Matamoros, Mexico. There, we crossed the bridge into Matamoros and met migrants living in a cluster of over 700 camping tents adjacent to the border crossing. This informal tent city is home to over 2,500 men, women, and children awaiting the date for their asylum hearing.
We met two women who had been living in the tent city and spoke of their harrowing journey from Central America to the border crossing at Matamoros. Clara**, who said she could write an entire book about her two-month journey with her young son and daughter, described fleeing Honduras at night by foot through the mountains and being crammed in a trailer with other migrants without food and water for days on end. She emphatically repeated several times that she could not, under any circumstances, return to her home country, as her life is at risk if she returns. She and her children finally arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border with a single peso to their name.
After reaching what she hoped was safety at the U.S. border, she was metered and found herself forced to join hundreds of other migrants in the Matamoros tent city as she awaited her court date for her asylum hearing. She said each of the migrants awaiting their court dates have had journeys similar to hers, and their unanticipated and extensive wait in Matamoros is taking a psychological toll on them: “People are dying. People are going crazy. They are being pushed to their limits,” she said.
The trauma of their journey was compounded the week before when a woman’s mutilated body, a victim of the local drug cartel, drifted by the tent city on the Rio Grande — the only source of bathing water for the migrants. As winter temperatures begin to drop and children are getting frostbite, many parents, in desperation, have sent their underage children across the border alone to get them desperately-needed medical aid, not knowing if or when they will be reunited. Clara articulated the abject fear permeating the tent city, and her concern for the health of the migrant children and an impending epidemic, if current conditions continue.
“This informal tent city is home to over 2,500 men, women, and children awaiting the date for their asylum hearing.”
Clara emphasized the importance of sharing her story, because there were migrants who lost their lives in attempting the same journey. “I have to tell our stories,” she said. When a member of our group noted how most of the migrants’ stories highlighted how their faith sustained them throughout the hardships they endured, Clara agreed. She said her family knew God was guiding them in their travels, never leaving or forsaking them. Others in the room listening nodded emphatically, with expressions of gratitude echoing around the room. We left our meeting humbled by their ongoing faith in the midst of extreme adversity.
Throughout the trip, the lesson our group continually learned was the importance of being present and available to serve. Whether it was forming an assembly line to distribute small plates of rice and beans to migrants in the tent city, teaching at English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, serving as witnesses to court sessions, or taking a young man from Honduras to the airport on his 18th birthday to meet his sponsor after living for eight months in a detention center, we learned of the myriad of ways each of us was able to help.
A Shared Response
One of the Center for Public Justice’s Welfare Guidelines states, “The call to be a neighbor — to help those in need — is addressed to all people and all institutions.” Citizens, government, and civil society — including the Church — have a responsibility to address the needs of our neighbors and honor their inherent dignity, especially when they are seeking asylum in our country.
As stated by Justice for Immigrants, a campaign by the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops,
Making vulnerable people wait to access asylum protection and due process in Mexico is concerning for a number of reasons...making asylum seekers wait in Mexico to access protection is deeply concerning from a due process and access to justice perspective. This policy impacts those people who have shown that they have a credible fear of persecution; nonetheless, the policy will make them wait in Mexico without access to family, legal, or social support. In fact, as of August, over 98 percent of those subject to the policy had not been able to obtain legal representation. Undoubtedly, this will make it more difficult for those subject to the policy to successfully assert their asylum claims and will also risk re-traumatizing them in the unsafe conditions in which they are forced to wait.
As the Center for Public Justice’s Guideline on Government reminds us, “It is legitimate – even a duty – to criticize unjust and bad government policies and public officials, but this should be done by calling government to fulfill its proper task and high purpose.” The physical, mental, and spiritual condition of our neighbors claiming asylum at the border should be of deep concern to us as Christians. It our responsibility to call upon our government officials to uphold policies and practices that honor — not degrade — those seeking asylum.
The contributions of civil society towards the crisis at the border should not be overlooked. The Church and nonprofits, including faith-based nonprofits, have had an outsized role in meeting the needs of migrants impacted by the Remain in Mexico policy. Indeed, the majority of work our group witnessed being done to provide for migrants’ basic needs was being done by volunteers. From a pediatric nurse who traveled from Portland, to a judge from Alaska, to the local Angry Tias and Team Brownsville groups, Americans are committed to utilizing their skills and resources on behalf of migrants. Whether it was during their vacation or a weekly commitment, we met concerned citizens offering their time to feed, clothe, and administer health care and legal representation to migrants in whatever capacity they could. The Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen and La Posada Providencia, a residential facility in San Benito that provides legal aid and ESL classes to asylum seekers, welcomes volunteers for an hour, a day, or on a regular basis. Volunteers are the backbone of their services, and the need is great.
Mike Seifert, a Border Advocacy Strategist at the Brownsville branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), is a former priest who is now committed to advocating on behalf of border communities and the legal challenges they face. He was adamant regarding the role of the American Church in upholding the mantle for the basic human rights of their neighbor, for Jesus’ ministry sought transformative work here on earth with a call to love our neighbors that transcends national borders.
“A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone’s skin, or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?,” asks Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Are we, as the collective American Church, unsettled enough by our faith to begin the work of honoring the inherent dignity and worth of our neighbors?
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” said Jesus. Advocating on behalf of our neighbors awaiting asylum is a necessity, and each of us, as citizens, has the capacity to make a positive contribution in defense of their basic human rights. They are sons and daughters; fathers and mothers; aunts and uncles each seeking safety and the opportunity to begin anew and live with dignity. Let us each uphold that dignity.
Sara Burback served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kazakhstan, and received her MA in International Human Rights at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. She recently completed a contract with UNRWA USA, where she organized its first Relay Run for Refugees, and is currently studying at the Spanish Language Institute in Puebla, Mexico.
*For a detailed description of living conditions in the Matamoros tent city and the American volunteers responding, listen to this November 15, 2019 podcast of This American Life.
**Names have been changed to protect the identities of migrants.
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