Summer job at El Paso migrant shelter proves ‘vastly different’ experience for Notre Dame students

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By Billy Cruz, Youth Radio
EL PASO – When I arrived at Casa Vides, a migrant shelter in El Paso Texas, I found a two-story brick building close enough to the border that I could walk to it. The building was almost a perfect cube shape, and as I knocked on the heavy wooden door, I wondered to myself, “Is this really where undocumented migrants are being housed?”

But I wasn’t there to interview migrants this time — Casa Vides wouldn’t permit me to talk to any of them in order to protect their privacy. I was there to talk to two college students who live and work with the migrants for the summer. https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.youthradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/27123940/YOUTH-RADIO-MIGRANT-SHELTER-VISIT-FINAL.mp3

Casa Vides is a place that provides refuge for two types of people: those who evaded border patrol, and those who were caught — handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement — and then released while their cases are still pending. Casa Vides provides food, shelter, and legal support to around 40 residents at a time and is run by the faith-based non-profit organization, Annunciation House.

El Paso shelter helps migrant parents regain children taken by U.S. border agents

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Confusion has reigned in the days since the Trump administration ended its controversial practice of taking children away from parents arrested at the Border. One El Paso nonprofit group has taken the lead on efforts to reunify parents and children, and to make sure the world knows their stories. At 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, a Department of Homeland Security bus pulled up outside Casa Vides, a shelter run by Annunciation House, and disgorged 32 people who had been held on misdemeanor immigration charges until the charges were dropped Thursday and Friday.  Annunciation House, which provides shelter and legal services for migrants and refugees, would help them begin what promises to be an arduous process of reunifying them with their children. Annunciation House Executive Director Ruben Garcia said he believed this was the first large-group release of parents who had been jailed under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. The group of migrants were connected with legal help, focused on getting their children back.

U.S.-Mexico border. (Chris Karadjov/Borderzine.com)

Humanity vs. legalism – a first encounter with ‘illegals’ on the U.S.-Mexico border

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SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Arizona  – As an emigrant from New England to Arizona 15 years ago, my first encounter with “illegals” occurred near sunset on November 19, 1997 as an autumn chill settled in. Two teenagers suddenly appeared around a bend of the trail I’d discovered down in the Santa Cruz River Valley below my home. I’d rested there on a root of a huge cottonwood, my two dogs lying at my feet. Shoulders slumped but heads held high, the teens swung gallon jugs half filled with murky river water along their flanks. But I saw that their gait was a slow and weary one.

Border Angels: Help for deportees changed my perspective

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MEXICALI, Mexico—While waiting in line at the U.S-Mexico border in Calexico, CA, a person can see on the other side of the border fence people with backpacks looking frightened and lost, some even dirty, asking others for help or money. Many, including myself, just turn away or just say no, not thinking of what they have gone through and automatically judge the person as a bad person, and steer away from them.  These people are deportees a long, long way from their homes and families. After spending 12 hours at a Mexicali refugee camp, Angeles sin Fronteras, a few blocks away from the international border, my perspective towards deportees completely changed. Not only are they good people, but the backbone of America. They do the jobs that many Americans would not even consider doing.

Immigrant high school graduates seek a pathway to U.S. citizenship

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EL PASO, Texas — Many of the 65,000 illegal immigrants who graduate from high school in the U.S. every year live under the entrapment radar, risking deportation at any time as they attempt to attend college or serve in the U.S. military services. According to statistics from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), most of these students in all grade levels have been raised in America, in American public school systems, American cities. Many only speak English and the American culture is what they know.  They have little left of their culture of origin. “It’s a very sad experience to forget where you came from because you’re accustomed to life here.  You could hardly remember that you came here from another country,” said a student who wishes to remain anonymous.  The student at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) is an illegal immigrant because, like the thousands of illegal high school students who graduate every year in the U.S., this student was not brought to America by choice.  The parents made that choice. “It’s a difficult situation.