EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – For more than three decades, Casa del Migrante in Juarez, Mexico has provided comfort and sustenance to weary travelers on their way north and those whose American dream ended in deportation.
Caretakers of this migrant shelter run by Catholic Church activists have seen the ebb and flow of human migration on the U.S.-Mexico border and how the toll of war, gang violence, failed harvests and political persecution weighs heavy on those who walk through their door.
Now, as the Trump administration limits asylum avenues, cracks down on illegal entries and steps up immigration raids at U.S. businesses and apartment complexes, the Rev. Francisco Bueno braces for the arrival of more deportees to the shelter.
“We are living a situation in which there is a lot of tension, a lot of violence and vulnerability” in immigrant communities north of the border, the director of Casa del Migrante said. “We see the face of suffering in many people trying to follow their (immigration) process, of people who already had their lives (in the U.S.) and were productive. Right now, they don’t want to go out or are being separated from their families.”
Bueno last week celebrated Mass to pray for people displaced from their countries, those uprooted from their new home and to call for peace amid escalating world conflicts.
“It hurts us to see what it is happening. We also feel impotence, we feel our hands tied not being able to do more,” the Catholic priest said. For now, “we have our doors open, we continue to serve people at Casa del Migrante …”
Those doors have been open for 35 years now and the Catholic hierarchy earlier this month celebrated that accomplishment.
“We have lived great experiences. We’ve had laborious years in which we have received thousands who have passed through Casa del Migrante,” Juarez Bishop Guadalupe Torres said.
He thanked staff members and volunteers for serving meals, procuring clothes, caring for the sick and offering kind words and spiritual advice. “The migrants are the most important part of this labor of caring,” the bishop said. “They don’t learn from us; we learn from them.”
From full house to a last resort
Casa del Migrante traces its roots to the 1980s in Tijuana when missionaries of the Scalabrini order opened their first refuge in Mexico for migrants. The one in Juarez followed a short time later with the order receiving support from then Bishop Manuel Talamas Camandari.
Casa del Migrante often teemed with upwards of 400 guests on many occasions in the past five years. The chapel was turned into a dormitory much of that time.
But the grounds of the shelter in Juarez’s Colonia Satelite seemed mostly vacant earlier this week. And a daily Mass now is scheduled at the chapel.
As in the rest of the migrant refuges throughout the city, most who remain arrived too late to file for asylum before Trump shut down access.
Among them is Ricardo Antonio Lopez Rivas, of El Salvador. He was hoping to join his son, who entered the United States while Joe Biden was still president and was given a notice to appear in immigration court.
Now the father doesn’t know if he’ll get in and the son is hoping immigration enforcement agents won’t be waiting for him outside a San Francisco courtroom.
“He’s in the middle of a process to secure documents … but it’s getting hard now,” Lopez said. “If you go outside your home or apartment, the fear is that immigration will get you. Everyone is afraid of that.”
Still, Lopez said he trusts God will provide for him and his family. He said he will wait in case there is a sudden turn in U.S. immigration policy.
“We are already on the border; we could get an opportunity at any moment,” he said.
ProVideo in Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.
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