This mom and her child were part of the caravan of Central Americans moving through Mexico last month. The shelters that CWS is supporting along the U.S.-Mexico border are serving families like this one. Photo by Sean Hawkey / ACT Alliance
I was recently in a seminary on the Texas-Mexico border that had been converted into a makeshift dining room. Sitting there were 70 or so asylum-seekers—mothers and babies, teenagers, fathers—recently released from detention. They had traveled hundreds of miles from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in search of a safe life in the United States.
The shelter director walked into the room, warmly made a joke in Spanish and had everyone laughing immediately. For a moment, there seemed to be joy; a reprieve from the suffering they had endured in the long journey to the U.S.
The priest led the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish before the meal. I peeked while he was speaking: all around me, hands were lifted and eyes were full of tears, and I wondered what these travelers had experienced as they made their way to this place. I wondered what they had lost; who they had lost – and yet what I saw in them were postures of gratitude, and I was humbled.
It was a moment of light in a dark situation. With the generous assistance from our supporters, though, our team at CWS is helping create more of these moments.
Alongside our partners, we’re providing support to eight shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border spanning three states and seven cities. These shelters welcome some of the most vulnerable adults and families of asylum seekers. Often, these are single parents with children, pregnant women, elderly individuals or people with medical needs. Shelter guests are people who have just been released by Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These individuals were detained and later released with a notice to appear for asylum hearings.
A CWS Blanket hangs with other laundry outside one of the CWS-supported shelters.
Shelter directors and volunteers are relentless in their pursuit to create spaces where asylum-seekers are treated with dignity and compassion. Each location provides temporary shelter, support for communication with family members, legal referrals and help in organizing logistics for onward travel. They also distribute supplies like blankets, clothing, hygiene kits and first aid items.
These shelters are operating because of dedicated volunteers, generous donations and a few core staff members. These small, incredible teams have been providing support for some time now, but they have so much to do with limited resources.
That’s why CWS was invited to help them out. We’re assisting in two key ways: expanding their capacity and improving their ability to coordinate onward travel for departing shelter guests. We’re connecting the shelters to volunteers who are willing to serve for a full year, and we’re providing technical support to the daily operations of the shelters. The goal is to increase the shelters’ overall capacity.
These backpacks and supplies – including blankets provided by CWS – will soon be distributed to asylum-seeking families who been released from detention and await their day in court.
In partnership with the United Methodist Committee on Relief, we are also providing tens of thousands of blankets to asylum-seeking families in states along the border. In San Antonio, for example, these blankets are distributed as part of a program that provides backpacks of supplies to families facing long bus rides (often a couple of days) in order to reach relatives in other cities. These families have few belongings and need basic items after they are released from detention and await their day in court.
We have seen time and again the courage and determination that asylum-seekers show on their journeys and as they try to build new, safe lives in a land far from home. We consider it an honor to welcome newly-arriving asylum-seekers to our communities and to support the shelters that provide safe spaces in the days after detention release.
We invite you to join in the welcome.
Click here to learn more about our work to protect vulnerable families. Click here to donate.
Bethany Showalter is the Special Programs Manager with the CWS Immigration and Refugee Program.