StemCell Therapy

PART 1: Life and struggles of migrants, aid workers

Driving an hour from the Tucson, Arizona, airport to the Mexican border, you go through miles of mountains and desert that in the dead of winter appear dark and ominous. Occasionally you see signs for a town -- Rio Rico, Patagonia, Tubac carved out of the terrain.

But for the hundreds of thousands of migrants from Central America and Mexico stuck in the state of Sonora, Mexico, the desert is often the only way out and into the U.S. And it can be treacherous.

In mid-February, I spent a week in Nogales, Arizona, with Jesuits who run the Kino Border Initiative in the other Nogales, across the border in Sonora.

Jesuit seminarian Kieran Halloran, 29, who just left St. Peters Prep in Jersey City after two years of teaching, is spending his third year of regency, or apostolic work, at Kino working with migrants. Reading and hearing so much about issues at the border, I decided to visit him and see for myself.

The suffering and desperation along with the daily heroism of those devoted to help -- are real and ever-present.

As an example, at dinner with the Jesuit community in Arizona one evening, seminarian Victor Yanez received a phone call from a border rescue group that they were on their way to retrieve a man from Mexico who was trying to get into the U.S. and became disoriented.

Nighttime temperatures in the desert are cold and although the stars are so bright you think you can reach up and grab one, the sky is very dark. The migrant was lucky his cell phone worked and he could reach his family, who called the rescue operation, and that they could locate him.

He was also lucky he survived; many do not. Bodies and bones, KBI staff told me, are routinely discovered in the desert. Against the wishes of the U.S. Border Patrol, activists regularly traipse through the desert in daylight and leave jugs and bottles of water along with blankets in what appear to be some well-traveled paths so migrants would have some relief.

But providing relief has become a monumental task.

In the last 40 years, the U.S. government has been tightening immigration policies and millions of migrants, even those seeking asylum for life-threatening situations, have found themselves in limbo at the border. Then-President Trump, through White House immigration adviser Stephen Miller, enacted harsh measures, including Title 42, which requires that migrants seeking asylum remain in Mexico until their cases are heard, which could take months or years. Perhaps as many as 200,000 people hoping to immigrate to the United States remain in the Nogales, Mexico, vicinity.

On April 1, the Biden administration announced plans to finally end Title 42 restrictions starting May 23.

More welcome news had come last month when the Biden administration announced a new policy through which some migrants seeking asylum will have their claims heard and evaluated by asylum officers instead of immigration judges, cutting down the massive backlog of applications.

More than two-thirds of the 11,015 migrants who arrived at KBI last year reported violence or persecution as the main reason for migrating, the organization reports.

And the harshness of life on the Mexican side of Nogales was chronicled in a remarkable 2021 book, Voices of the Border (Georgetown University Press), edited by Tobin Hansen and Sister Maria Engracia Robles, KBI Mexicos director of education.

Robles is the superior of the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist in Sonora and spent years listening to and transcribing migrants stories of wanting a better life but being stymied by U.S. policies going back to the 1980s. While Trump was a megaphone for hate, even President Obama was deporting people at record numbers.

Maras, or gangs, rule much of Mexico and they demand payment to escape via train. But once on the train, migrants are targeted again for hundreds of U.S. dollars, which most do not have, to continue the journey. Those who refuse or cannot pay would be thrown off into the train tracks, decapitated or attacked with a machete, the VOB book detailed.

From 1998 to 2020, the authors write, more than 7,500 people lost their lives while attempting to cross the treacherous U.S.-Mexico border due to heat stroke, dehydration, hyperthermia and drowning.

Some have been killed in incidents with Border Patrol. On the Mexican side of the border, Halloran and I stopped by a huge painting of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was shot and killed 10 years ago by a USBP agent who fired into Mexico from the American side. The agent claimed the boy threw rocks at him, putting the agents life in danger. Mysteriously the camera video disappeared and the agent was acquitted of murder at trial in Tucson.

FLEEING VIOLENCE

Among the 50 migrants in the shelter when I was there were people from Central American countries fleeing gang violence and threats on their lives. KBI protects them while providing legal aid to expedite their asylum claims.

The seriousness of their situations is evident in the fact that the new KBI building, open since 2020, has no outdoors space where the shelter residents can go out in the sun even though there is endless land around it. On the land adjacent, men who appear to be squatters wander. Yanez calls them the Mafia, who spy on people coming to and from the border crossing and are part of an underworld of people who take advantage of desperate migrants.

As a priest, I had free reign at the shelter but as a journalist could not interview the migrants there. KBIs policy is not to revictimize the migrant, said Yanez.

We work with each migrant how to tell his or her story in a fashion that looks toward the future, he told me.

That is the role of Gia Del Pino, 31, KBI director of communications for the last eight months.

Migrant justice is my calling, said the Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona in Tucson, a beautiful campus I visited. She is a child of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants.

My closest contact to these protected migrants was sitting in on the ESL classes given by Sister Marlita Henseller in a back section of the shelter. Shes on a one-year sabbatical volunteering at KBI. A Wisconsin Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity for 58 years, she represents for me the best of the hundreds of women religious I have met in my years as a priest. They started out as school teachers or working in Catholic institutions but then embraced the Vatican II spirit to get out into the world and minister to the poor.

Henseller learned Spanish in Bolivia over five months and then served as a missionary in Peru for 12 years.

Wanting to go to Sonora, she said, I told my provincial I wanted to hug Spanish babies. And surely her warm, friendly style embraces migrant women and children as she guides them to learn English.

The mothers are young, but their children seem to pick up the English quicker. Sometimes, the younger children are restless and distract the group, but Sister takes it in stride and shows humor.

The international charity Save the Children staffs a large, colorful education center at KBI and works with the children to keep up with studies and also provide them with some activities.

COMEDOR

While KBI now has many components, it is commonly referred to as the comedor, or dining room, after its initial mission to feed migrants.

As soon as you enter the large central space, your eyes are drawn to a huge mural of the Last Supper on the far wall, a painting of actual KBI migrants, staff and volunteers done by Wenceslao Hernandez, a migrant who has established himself as a Sonora, Mexico, artist. Its so realistic you think it is a photo, but it also captures what continues to be KBIs main mission: feeding the hungry.

On any given day pre-pandemic, KBI would serve anywhere from 100 to 900, estimated Joanna Williams, 30, executive director for the last year, though employed there for seven.

The current building opened Feb. 12, 2020, right before COVID closed it down, and it has slowly been building up its clientele and services. Food service is now to-go.

My first day there I was part of the morning food serving team dishing out string beans mixed in with scrambled eggs and then rice, once the eggs were finished.

Henseller checked in the migrants, mostly women with children and some men.

First, soup, then I would be next. They would say in Spanish how many people they would feed that day and I would scoop that number. Then they could have mole, chicken pieces in chocolate sauce. They help themselves to some drink and bread and then go on their way.

Its very eye-opening to see these young mothers with young children following behind them often clinging to their blouse. I asked each child his or her name and made faces at them to make them smile. The special treatment they receive blunts the harshness of daily life they face.

In the month of February, KBI served 8,374 meals. While the number of people they feed now is lower than pre-pandemic, the numbers grow daily.

These migrants are staying in Sonora shelters while their asylum cases are processed, Halloran said.

Without KBI, where would they be able to get as much delicious and nutritious food?

The prep kitchen is always a beehive of activity. After serving, the food for the next days meal is prepped and I was assigned chopping a huge bin of onions along with Kevin Miller, a 28-year-old Californian discerning whether he wants to enter the West Coast province of Jesuits this summer, and Chris Nguyen, 45, a Jesuit seminarian and a regent in campus ministry at the University of California, San Diego.

Four Mexican Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist oversee the kitchen and food prep. They get lots of help from recent college graduates and some gap-year students who spend anywhere from two months to a year living in community in a house nearby in Mexico.

Courtney Smith was next to me on the food serving line. A graduate of Georgetown, the Connecticut native is spending one year at KBI to see the migrant experience first-hand so she can go into work, perhaps in D.C., writing policy for a member of Congress or an immigrant advocacy group.

ADVOCACY

Indeed, advocacy is a big part of KBI mission to promote U.S./Mexico border and immigration policies that affirm the dignity of the human person and a spirit of bi-national solidarity.

To achieve this goal, they provide direct humanitarian assistance, accompaniment with migrants, social and pastoral education, networking to research and transform local, regional, and national immigration policies, according to their website.

In fact, Executive Director Williams credits the decision to end Title 42 in part to the persistence and courage of asylum seekers here in Nogales who have shared their stories and illustrated the suffering that the policy has created.

Yanez, 31, has the job of directing KBIs operations.

A Jesuit regent, who just spent two years at Fordham studying philosophy and also receiving a M.B.A., would typically just volunteer. But his abilities made him suitable to fill a valuable role.

What leaves him completely joyful, he said, is that KBI can provide food and services and allow migrants to acknowledge their own dignity.

He made a coup this year by attracting KBIs first full-time medical doctor. Mexican native Dr. Obed Ruiz, 34, has been a doctor for four years. He sees perhaps a dozen or so migrants each day and said, They have lots of needs.

He treats for dehydration, wounds, blisters and also sees victims of violence. Many, he said, have psychological problems from abuse in so many forms.

The shelter, which accommodates up to 150 individuals, is on the far side of the KBI building. They sleep in bunk beds in several large areas where there are also showers and restrooms. There is also an isolation section for individuals with COVID.

One of the most colorful people I met during my trip was Jesuit Peter Neeley, the superior of the Jesuit community and one of KBIs founders. A Jesuit for 50 years, he reminded me of the many Jersey City Jesuits Ive known, except he wears a cowboy hat and sports a handlebar mustache. Like the Jesuits in Hudson, Neeley came to the order while its 28th Superior General, Pedro Arrupe, moved the Society of Jesus in the late 1960s to live religious life through the prism of social justice.

We moved away from Christ the King to Christ the liberator, Neeley said.

WHO WAS EUSEBIO KINO?

In a way he is a lot like the namesake of the Border Initiative: Eusebio Francisco Kino, from Segno, Tirol, now Italy. The Spanish king in the late 17th century sent this Jesuit priest to evangelize through missions in the Pimera Alta region, now divided between the Mexican state of Sonora and Arizona. Kino was quite successful and even the Spanish military reported to him. Named after Kino is a parkway road, a sports complex and even Kino Springs.

Neeley lives with four seminarians half his age -- Halloran, Yanez, Jarrett Ornelas, who was away while I was there, and Max Landman, 35, a Texas diocesan priest transitioning into the Jesuits. All of them speak Spanish and relate well to each other, sharing in cooking dinner and taking on community tasks. They celebrate daily Mass in a small chapel in their house usually right before dinner.

We are doing what Christ wants, Neeley told me, not to be a prophet, but to live by example.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles are positioned in Nogales, Arizona, under a pedestrian bridge used by documented commuters. (Rev. Alexander M. Santora photo)

PART 2: All they want is a better life

President Trump used to claim that U.S. border agents supported his draconian immigration policies, and migrants routinely report abuse by USBP. But there are agents, I found, who do their job without malice.

One day, I took a bike ride through downtown Nogales, Arizona, and could not go any further since I reached the elaborate crossing where people, mostly Americans, legally walk to and from Mexico for work. Obviously, they have papers.

During a shift change, I encountered an agent when he disembarked from a USBP van to stretch. He told me he was watching the people exiting on the Arizona side, saying migrants trying to illegally enter the U.S. sometimes dress like commuters and flee into the country.

Hes worked for Border Patrol through three U.S. presidents. He himself is a migrant and now lives a few towns north of Nogales in an upper-middle-class suburb.

He seemed very caring and sensitive. Just that day, he said, he stumbled across a bin of old boots he intended to bring to the job and give to migrants who need them. He knows the agents have a job to do but seemed aware how Trump demonized their work and their image.

Morale is low, he admitted.

I told him I was a Catholic priest and he said he was Catholic and that might have colored what he told me: We feel sorry for the migrants because we know all they want is a better life for their families.

Shops and supermarkets in Nogales, Arizona, have a large selection of Catholic statuary. (Rev. Alexander M. Santora photo)

PART 3: Mexican, Catholic influences strong in Nogales

When I visit a new area, I like to explore the neighborhoods, so I spent several periods during the week walking and biking around Nogales, Arizona. I stumbled on the local library where I could read the Arizona Daily Star and some weeklies.

Nogales has been hit hard by the pandemic with many storefronts shuttered and others trying to hang on. I kept passing a closed store that sold Mexican artifacts. Finally, I found it open, met the owner and learned it is actually a business that sells Mexican items to other businesses for design and decoration.

The owner told me hes been there 23 years and might open a small retail space to attract more customers. Business is bad, he lamented.

Nearby Food City, the equivalent of our Shop-Rite or Acme, has a very popular bakery. Almost all the staff and patrons are Spanish-speaking. As I walked throughout, I noticed that their healthy alternatives, though, were minimal with little choices for no-sugar or low-fat options. But they have two aisles of religious statuary and candles.

Across the street and up the hill is Sacred Heart Church, which I attended on Sunday morning along with about 200 people, again mostly Hispanic.

I later crossed the tracks, which seem to bring freight trains to and from the Mexican border and their box cars seemed endless. It reminded me of what Jersey City had been in its industrial heyday when boats would dock on the Hudson waterfront and trains would transport goods to the heartland.

The Rev. Alexander Santora is the pastor of Our Lady of Grace and St. Joseph, 400 Willow Ave., Hoboken, NJ 07030. Email: padrealex@yahoo.com; Twitter: @padrehoboken.

See the rest here:

Beyond the Wall: Eye-opening visit to U.S.-Mexico border | Faith Matters - NJ.com

This entry was posted on April 11, 2022 at 6:17 pm and is filed under Eye Medical Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |