Hearing Migrant Stories

Sunday took us to services at Southside Presbyterian Church, known for its activism in sanctuary and immigrant issues. The service was joyful and inspiring—from the drums that ushered us in and out of the sanctuary to the gospel music reverberating through the native American kiva, complete with hole in the roof for smoke. Allison Harrington—Southside’s pastor—spent lunch with us discussing what she has learned by offering sanctuary in all its forms to migrants over the past several years.

During the afternoon, we visited Casa Alitas, a volunteer-run center housed in a Benedictine monastery that takes in women and children who’ve just crossed the border. The Center offers medical screening, food, clothing, shelter and help with transportation via bus or plane to places within the US. While we were there, a volunteer driver returned to the shelter with a mother and daughter in tears; they had missed their flight to Akron, Ohio, because TSA could not process their papers quickly enough. Casa Alitas hopes to set up a database to track the migrants who come through their center--and perhaps to share that database with other shelters around the country. If you have magic hands when it comes to building or adapting databases, please step forward.

We came back to Borderlinks for a workshop in making pupusas, taught by Yesenia Palencia, director of Casa Mariposa, another migrant group focusing help on the immigrant LGBTQ community. Yesenia described her trip from El Salvador through Mexico on La Bestia and across the border where she was picked up by Border Patrol. She spent a full year in detention at Eloy--locked in a cell for much of each day--before her asylum case was adjudicated. She was released on a $15,000 bond (covered by Casa Mariposa). Her dream is to open a pupusa restaurant. From sampling her wares, we are sure she will someday succeed.