Summer in El Paso

We moved hundreds of mattresses, bed frames, fans, shelves, and boxes of food/medical supplies from one shelter to another today.  (See this picture of all of us completely pooped.)

As I drove an older man and his daughter to the airport today, I thought about their bravery. The gentlemen was slightly deaf, so the young girl—just 12 years old—had to compensate. She was mature beyond her years, with big eyes and long braids.  She told me her family came from Honduras, where they grew vegetables for a living. She and her father had to wait in Juarez for months before they were allowed entry into the United States.   Her sister has lived in Fort Meyers, Florida for the past 14 years. This was their final destination.  They had never ridden in an airplane before. They asked me what it was like, how to get through security, and how they would find where they needed to go. We had stapled a sign to their bag that said: "I don't speak English. Please help me find my gate."  I reassured them that it was easy and that people in the United States fly all the time. I told them to sit by a window—that it's amazing how the buildings, trees, and mountains...

Sister Julie and I went to Albertson's today. Julie is no taller than five feet and wears Birkenstocks.  As we were driving there, I noticed a small silver ring on her finger. I asked her where it was from. She smiled and said it was a colibrí (hummingbird).  The colibrí transcends borders as it migrates from the United States to Mexico each year. It symbolizes hope, perseverance, and individual strength—all principles that the migrant families embody.  In indigenous lore, the hummingbird is a messenger between the living and the dead. Julie's ring made me think about all those that die coming across the border, all those that lose their culture, all those that (in a sense) must be re-born in an entirely new different and strange world. I thought about birth and death and migration and flight. And when I saw a dead bird on the ground outside Annunciation House, it seemed fitting. I took a picture of it. 

99% of the people that pass through the shelter where I'll be this summer are released from ICE detention centers. Our job here is to move them on to better places—homes with family members or friends who will care for them.  Megan, the manager of Casa del Refugiado, explained that we are simply a blip on their journey of thousands of miles. This summer, we will be helping people who have been kidnapped, raped, threatened, and abused. Because of the sheer volume of people we take in every day—close to 100 guests—Megan warned us that we will likely become numb to their stories and pain.  Many of the guests come in the blue shirt and sweatshirt that they were given to wear at the detention center. Most have had all of their belongings taken away.  We watched a group of about 30 arrive, and the volunteer on shift went around asking them how long they had been detained for. Their answers ranged from a few months to multiple years.  The people that have been released from...

We spent the day preparing the shelter in downtown El paso for those who have fallen off the wall. It's a beautiful two-story brick building with inviting yellow walls and tall ceilings, named Casa Vides.  It had been closed for a year during the pandemic, so we spent the majority of our time dusting and cleaning. We made fifty beds and cleaned hundreds of dishes in anticipation for our recently injured guests. Three of the volunteers will be stationed here this summer.  A colorful and prominent mural greets those who enter the building. It features indigenous symbols, bones to represent all of the tragedy inherent in the migrant journey, corn plants, and faces of various migrants. The two largest faces towards the right are those of an El Salvadoran activist couple (the Vides family) who were killed in the 1970s violence, whose five children Ruben adopted.  Ruben proudly told us that he has many Vides grandchildren now, many of whom are older than we are.  The oran...

It's one thing to hear and to read about the wall, and another to stand beside it, poke your fingers through it, and stare up at it. It's a 30-foot tall fence that runs the length of the border between El Paso and Juarez. And it's striking.  Our group stood huddled in the shade of its thick barbed wire, thinking about how difficult it would be to climb over it.  Mary, a shift coordinator at one of the Annunciation shelters, explained that it's really a method to slow down migrants so that border control can more easily arrest them. Only coyotes know how and when it's safe to make the crossing. Migrants typically have 15-minute windows. They climb the wall with hanging ladders, use burlap sacks to shift across at the top, and then shimmy down the tall poles. People of all different athletic/physical capabilities attempt to make the climb. Many of them fall off.  Due to the high volume of fallings at the wall, Annunciation House has a shelter strictly devoted to helpi...

Ruben Garcia, the director of Annunciation House, led us (me and 12 other volunteers staying here for ten weeks) in orientation today. He’s one of the founders of the organization and reviewed the history and work of the house.  It's a shelter that offers hospitality to the migrant, refugee, and economically vulnerable people of El Paso. In 1977, Garcia and four others belonging to the Catholic Diocese got together to think about how they could experience the Gospel more deeply. They loaned out the second floor of a red brick building in the center of the city and spent hours talking about what type of service work they could engage in.  Garcia said that they were all aware of the fact that God didn't identify with the five of them directly, but instead with the poor and less privileged. They wanted to place themselves within the poor, to feed the hunger they all had to find purpose, meaning, and depth in their daily lives.  "Wouldn't it be great if for a moment we cou...