A few members of the WFC Community and Global Impact Teams recently went to the US / Mexico border to visit shelters that are assisting migrants. Here is some of what they experienced:

"For the past 3 days I have been at the US / Mexico border with an organization that serves asylum seekers trapped on the impossible merry-go-round of trying to escape their desperate realities of violence, extortion, rape, kidnapping and death. We met with young moms who have experienced unimaginable horrors crossing the desert from Honduras and Guatemala.

In the last couple weeks, Rosa* and Maria* both arrived pregnant, at a shelter operated by a local church in Juarez. Rosa paid $10,000 to a man who promised to get her and her 4-year old daughter to safety on an air conditioned tour bus. Her reality was a nightmare trip in a trailer with 300 people—with little oxygen and no food. It is over 2,000 miles from Honduras to El Paso. When Rosa arrived at the border in Juarez, she showed herself to the border patrol, requested asylum and was turned away. As she and her daughter left the US Point of Entry, she was picked up by a cab driver who promised to take her to a shelter. Instead, he took her to a warehouse where she and her daughter were held hostage for 15 days. During this time the cartel held a gun to her head and threatened to kill both of them, asking her which one she preferred they kill first, if she didn’t pay them the thousands of dollars they demanded. Rosa decided she would rather die trying to escape than be killed by her kidnappers. She found herself on her knees praying that God would provide a way for her to get out. And He did. With her daughter tied to her back, one morning at 1am when her kidnappers had passed out drunk, Rosa found a box that enabled her to hoist herself and her child over the warehouse wall. She walked for 4 hours before stopping to rest and ultimately found herself at the shelter we were visiting.

Asylum seekers leave their homes with a handful of belongings. These are the only belongings Rosa and her daughter own. They are so grateful to have a safe space to sleep in the church.

Maria has a similar story. Also turned away at the border after making the journey across the dessert with her child, she was kidnapped and held for 10 days. Gangs in Guatemala had forced her into an unsustainable web of extortion that was threatening the life of her aging mom, herself and her child. She and her child ran leaving everything behind. After being kidnapped by the cartel at the border, they let her go after her sister living here in the US paid them $11,000. They knocked her out with a gun to her head and late one night, dumped her and her child in a Juarez park. Maria also found her way to the shelter. We heard the same stories of families running from violence, fear and death, one after the other.

What I saw this week was not illegal immigration but a humanitarian crisis. The people in these shelters are not trying to enter the US illegally. They are literally showing themselves to Border Patrol and requesting asylum. The men want to work. They want to provide for their families and the moms want opportunities for their children that they have not had —a life where they can grow up without seeing family members murdered, where they don’t have to live below the poverty line, working one’s whole life to pay impossible debts to incredibly powerful cartels.

The issues at the border are complicated and confusing. They are multi-layered and complex and in many cases impossible to navigate without casualties. I have no idea what positive change might look like, but I do know that women like Rosa and Maria are doing what I hope I would have the courage to do in the same circumstances. These moms are beyond brave. They have left everything behind —their families, their homes, their language, their culture...everything familiar to protect their children.

As a follower of Jesus, I am convinced that our duty lies with loving the foreigner and showing them the love of Christ, regardless of where their citizenship lies. It’s what we have been asked to do, by our God who’s son was the child of asylum seekers when they were running from Herodian violence that threatened to destroy their family." -Reneé Terrill

*Names Changed