For the Safety of Migrants

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Last week, I was part of a delegation of 10 parishioners from St. Ignatius and another five individuals from St. Agnes and other faith communities that traveled to Mexicali, Mexico. Our aim was to accompany for a few days migrants who are seeking asylum in the U.S. We met families and single men from Guatemala, various regions in Mexico, Cuba, and Peru. This was the second such delegation this year, the first being in January, which resulted in our parish’s sponsoring the Lopez family, whom many of you now know, as they await their asylum hearing in January 2024.

There are nine shelters in Mexicali for migrants seeking to cross the border. Border Compassion, a non-profit run by Sr. Suzanne Jaybro, C.S.J., invites communities to two of those shelters. Its mission, and ours last week, is to offer a compassionate, humanitarian response to migrants seeking asylum.

Most of our time was spent in pairs or small groups with individuals or families as they began to build their cases for crossing the border and eventually obtain asylum. Our goal was to help them identify the essential moments and events in their stories (which usually included threatened or actual violence); put them in chronological order; assign dates; and recall important details (“I knew they were gang members by the tattoos on their arms.”). We also coached them to articulate clearly why they cannot return to their country or state (usually for fear for their lives) and to tell only the truth.

My Spanish used to be excellent. These days, it is passable, and I’m comfortable in ordinary, basic conversations, so it was a challenge to understand a lot of it. I had to learn or relearn words such as “threats,” “kidnapped,” and “negligence.” I had to take deep breaths to hold back tears in the moments when the pieces of a story fell into place, and I fully understood the enormity of violence and suffering and fear. And each day, when we shared our stories over dinner, I was in awe of how our hearts, even when broken open, can still so deeply carry within them the people whose experiences did the breaking.

It's tempting to multiply the need and suffering we saw and heard by Gaza, Haiti, Ukraine, and South Sudan. But we were in Mexicali, with those particular beautiful people across the tables. I think we helped about a dozen families and individuals in their preparation, and our efforts were rewarded on Sunday when we received the news that one of our families crossed over and was on their way to North Carolina. We are praying for the others by name, with their faces and stories held in our hearts.

Two delegations of attorneys and Spanish speakers from St. Ignatius are in the works for 2024. If you are interested, please contact me.

Oremus pro invicem, and for the safety of migrants around the globe.

Fr. Greg