You may remember when my friend Sandy posted a poem called “When I had a waist…” Sandy and several friends recently decided they could no longer sit at home and do nothing about the border crisis, so they signed up to volunteer for a few weeks at Annunciation House, a place of refuge in El Paso, Texas, for people waiting for their asylum decisions to come through. We are publishing several days of Sandy’s journal from El Paso.. It didn’t turn out like they expected….
October 7, 2019
It’s been an eventful two days.
I arrived to find that the Air Bnb I had rented for the three of us was undergoing a full-scale renovation and there were no restaurants or grocery stores anywhere nearby. Our apartment was bare walls, poorly equipped, and only the bathroom had been fully restored. It was airless and with no ceiling fans or decor. I had not rented a car, hoping we could walk to Annunication House, but it was ten miles away. It wasn’t a happy moment.
Shortly after my friends arrived, we strategized, went to the grocery in an Uber, had some chicken salad and Triskets for dinner and prepared to go out to work on Sunday.
We went thinking we’d receive an orientation by the site manager, but no one appeared for the first three hours. We were then given a thorough tour of the building and the highlight of the day was an afternoon meeting with Ruben Garcia, the founder of AH. There were around 30 volunteers (all ages & genders) and staff, and Ruben gave an excellent presentation to explain why there was no one coming across the border. In the first 8 months of the year, AH served 150,000 immigrants. There are currently maybe 10 people in our refugio, one of two in El Paso — the other being a huge facility. The dramatic decline has mainly to do with simply not letting anyone through, stopping them in Mexico or sending them back to any country they traversed en route to seek asylum there, not in the US. The U.S. strategy is to block the pathways to asylum and to intimidate asylum seekers by splitting families. The root causes are ignored, but the actions to prevent legal processing from taking place are legion.
Annunciation House is considering doing what some churches, especially in New Mexico are doing, i. e., crossing the border with food and supplies for those trapped in limbo in Mexico. We shall see.
By the end of yesterday we had decided to rent a car and to move out of our Air Bnb in downtown El Paso. I’m now writing from the Loretto Convent, much nearer the refugio, full of delightful sisters from various orders, a number of whom are also volunteering at AH.
Today, Carol and I organized the art closet, and I made new signs for the travel packets. We washed the kitchen down and cleaned nooks and crannies. We looked at possible designs for a mural. It was a “make work” day, and I think we have discovered that we will have to be fully responsible for our engagement. The real interaction with refugees is minimal, and may not improve.
AH is well-organized with a well thought-through system of care and intake. But one senses that the regular staff feel very much at sea and haven’t figured out how to be “at cause” in this situation. We must think about how to use this time to prepare for the moment the flood of people returns. We can help AH to be more ready. That said, I don’t think it’ll happen in the next two weeks. I’m at sea as well, wanting to do something, but unsure what is really needed. It’s a challenge.
October 8, 2019
We went another day with no appearances of the site coordinator and thus we have been trying to figure out what needs to be done. This morning, we had a sweet time with a couple of migrant children, Kenia and Murillo, trying to clean and disinfect all the toys (about 10,000 legos…). It was fun. Judith taught English, Pam washed and hung out clothes. I wrote signs, and Carol tried desperately to get an okay for a mural of the world that parents could use to show their children the journeys they’ve been on.
One family left, another came in; there are the social security ladies (widows of American citizens who come twice a year to maintain their Social Security payments); one Brazilian family, one family from Juarez, a darling little motherless child named Kenia. The nuns participated in a lunch feeding of people living on the streets in Juarez, desperately waiting their turn for an interview, afraid to move for fear of losing their place. They are living in tents and lean-tos with their children. This program was at only one bridge of three that immigrants cross to enter El Paso and the volunteers served about 150 people. This is the smallest of the “tent cities” at the 3 bridges. Who lives this way but someone who is desperate?
October 9, 2019
We began the day by strategizing over breakfast. This shut-down of immigrants has been sudden. A woman who was here last week said they had 100 people a day and though the pace wasn’t frantic, it was steady. The drop was sudden and unexpected, and everyone is reeling. We’re at a standstill and have more volunteers (both temporary and local) than guests. We decided to explore other volunteer options and also to ensure that we communicate with the people who have been so interested and supportive of this effort.
We met with the site manager and one of her deputies, and we were able to come to an agreement to be on call and to plan on a shorter workday from 10-2, as well as to do a couple of things we’ve wanted to do. Judith will be teaching English. Carol and I mounted a world map with stick pins for parents to use to talk about where they came from and where they’re going. I worked in the kitchen organizing the refrigerator and cooking a couple of hours. The activity was fun and rewarding.
I think we all feel better at having taken the reins of our time here. It’s very clear that it won’t be what we imagined, but we still hope to be able to learn, communicate and impact in some small way on the issues. We plan to work on our communication and to explore other options for volunteerism including helping with the Juarez lunch program.
October 10, 2019
We went to visit Project Vida, the brainchild of a former colleague and Presbyterian minister. The project does low-cost housing, medical and psychological interventions, work with the homeless, a number of schools, and local community-based wellness programs. The organization is thirty years old and has grown from one adobe house to its present broad geographic and programmatic scope. It was exciting to see how much impact they’ve been able to create.
Located only a couple of blocks from the border, Bill said when he first began, people would gather at the fence on the Mexico side and wait patiently to be picked up by the Border Patrol, who then took them for immigration processing. That has completely disappeared as the Mexican army is now patrolling the border with guns and being caught by the Mexicans means death or immediate deportation.
I heard more stories today of the realities people face. After six months walking to arrive at the border and fleeing people who wanted to do them harm, a man named Willy was allowed into the US with his little girl. His wife, who will give birth in December, was sent back to Honduras. He’s now on his way to New York where he will have his first asylum hearing. He has no family there, but a church has offered to take him in and no one knows what will happen after that.
What’s mind-boggling to me is knowing that I’m living in a TINY SLICE of this reality of desperation. I’m in one organization in El Paso, Texas, when there are organizations all along the border from Texas to California, not to mention multiple caring groups in places like Phoenix or Albuquerque. The fact that our government has created a crisis that requires this type of intervention from so many organizations is dismaying and alarming, even as they generously offer their love and support..
We finished off the day with a riotous evening with Sisters Katherine and Kay who are returning to Boston tomorrow. Unaware it was karaoke night, we went to Ciro’s and were entertained by a variety of folks, most of whom had quite beautiful voices. One or two as Kay said, “had a masterful command of the sub tones.” We met three Mexican-American women I think might have owned the place, all of whom sang and seemed intrigued with this table full of old white women singing along with the Mexican songs on the screen. It was marvelously zany.
We anticipate that this coming week, we will continue to see limited numbers of people arriving. We will go to Juarez to serve lunch on Tuesday to those living in tents and hoping for their appointments for processing. We are all moved and changed by the tragedy of what’s happening here, the inhumane treatment of families, the terrible toll on individuals and on the values of our nation. We’re encouraged by the brave, imaginative and united response of many people and privileged to know and work with them. It’s been a sad but rich experience.