Our 50-State Border Crisis by Howard G. Buffett

Author:Howard G. Buffett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2018-04-03T04:00:00+00:00

Returning their dignity

In 2014, an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied minors and families with young children flooded into south Texas along the Rio Grande. Sister Norma had always maintained good relationships with Border Patrol, and when she visited the migrants at the Rio Grande Valley Sector Station, she could see that “These people were in poor condition. They were dirty, the children were dehydrated, sometimes sick.”

Sister Norma asked the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in McAllen if she could temporarily use the parish hall as a respite center. He agreed, and she recruited volunteers to help her collect the migrants and young children at the bus station and bring them to Sacred Heart to clean up and rest for the next phase of their journey. “This is humanitarian care. We let them take a shower, get clean clothes, have a warm meal, see a doctor. We are trying to give back to them a sense of dignity.”

“Temporary” turned into months and now years. I met Juanita in 2015 at Sacred Heart, about forty-eight hours after she was apprehended by BP. She was part of a large group of migrants who arrived at the parish hall when I was there to visit Sister Norma. The tradition at the center is for volunteers to welcome the migrants who arrive from the bus station with smiles and applause. At first they look bewildered, but “You see them transform back into human beings,” says Sister Norma. The center collects donations of clothing, diapers, baby formula, food for the migrants’ bus journeys, basic medicines. There is a tent outside with cots for those who may have a few hours to rest before they have to be back at the bus station.

The McAllen community has embraced this effort, Sister Norma says, and during the crisis people also traveled from all over the country to lend a hand. But from the beginning Sacred Heart made clear that the center is for temporary respite, not a permanent home. Sister Norma insists the staff and volunteers focus on humanitarian needs, not politics.

When I met Juanita at Sacred Heart, she had just put Carlitos down for a nap. We sat at a table in a small room in the back of the center. She looked tired, but she was gracious in answering my questions about what had made a twenty-two-year-old woman follow such a risky and dangerous path with a three-year-old child in her arms. This is a question I have asked many times over the years. I always remember a woman in a train yard in Mexico who also had a young child with her, but explained to me: “The risk is less than doing nothing.” According to Juanita, her immediate motivation was not money, not a job, not a “promise of a better life.” It was staying alive.

She explained that she and Carlitos’s father, Pedro, had attracted the attention of MS-13, which controls her hometown in El Salvador. Pedro is from a nearby colonia (or community), which is controlled by the rival 18th Street gang.

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