by the associated press: As changing policies, rampant misinformation and agitated, fearful crowds converge in El Paso, faith leaders are attempting to provide shelter and uplift. Along with prayers, they are counseling immigrants about the daunting challenges that await them on American soil with the huge backlog in asylum hearings and Newly announced measures of the Biden administration Many consider it stricter than the current Title 42.
During Thursday morning Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a few blocks from the border with Mexico, the Rev. Daniel Mora greeted the hordes of migrants arriving in the city and prayed for goodwill during the pandemic at the church’s gym-shelter. The age-old restrictions on seeking asylum were lifted overnight.
Mora noted in the collective intentions, “The asylum promises of this country can be renewed.” In an office next to the historic sanctuary, one of his fellow Jesuits prepared to visit a shelter in a different El Paso parish to counsel immigrants who had already crossed illegally and been detained.
“No one knows it’s a part, but we’re halfway there,” said Tatiana Gamez, a Colombian mother who was released by immigration officials to a small shelter run by the Catholic parish of St. Francis Xavier. Across one of El Paso’s three international bridges.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the asylum. But it’s a relief to be here already safe.” Rev. Mike Gallagher, also an attorney with Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, was listening intently to one of the many daily legal talks the newly released migrants give.
Gallagher visits several shelters to explain to immigrants who have been arrested for illegally exceeding the conditions of their release—including a “notice to appear” before immigration officials and later before a judge Including the issue of asylum.
Gámez and more than a half-dozen family members, including a pregnant niece and niece’s 2-year-old daughter, decided to flee Colombia after they were threatened over a piece of land there.
They crossed illegally through a hole in the concertina wire that Texas National Guard troops had built 17 miles along the dusty Rio Grande riverbanks to prevent mass crossings, when Title 42 was originally approved. was expected to be raised in December.
“We wanted to do things well,” Gamez added in tears. But they allowed more than 1,000 migrants to be let through by US officials under unrelenting sunlight and strong winds, as has been the case for months.
Hearing that some migrants had slept there for several days under the constant threat of being kidnapped for ransom by a Mexican cartel, and fearing a wave of rapid deportations starting on Friday, they decided to slip through the hole and be released Spent six days in custody before being released. Shelter.
Faith leaders said one reason for the big surge of migrants earlier this week was widespread belief that the end of Title 42 restrictions would lead to more deportations of illegal immigrants, who now face a possible five-year ban on returning to the US.
“Their main priority is to try them out,” said Maria Szaquim de Torres, director of domestic programs for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. Encountered on the way.
On Friday, following the expiration of Title 42 and the implementation of more asylum restrictions, several faith leaders said they fear for migrants who have no choice but to return to their countries, yet take more dangerous routes to the United States. would like to enter.
“I do believe people will sit back and watch for a while. Once they realize that only a small percentage will be able to enter legally, they will become more desperate, harder, more dangerous to cross.” We will find ways,” said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso.
Read this also | Top 10,000 daily Americans crossing the border as immigrants seeking admission before Title 42 expires
“Once again, we are playing into the hands of organized crime,” said Seitz, who has a shelter in his backyard at the diocesan office near the border wall section where migrants have gathered in recent days. After crossing the American authorities were expected to surrender. Rio Grande.
Seitz, president of the Conference of the American Catholic Bishops’ Migration Committee, said he is concerned about the rising number of injuries and deaths if migrants try to move beyond the heavily guarded border — both for migrants and for the agents and volunteers who work in particular. Conduct search and rescue operations in summer with deadly heat.
Seitz said he also worries that images of lawlessness at the border could turn Americans away from helping newcomers. He made a public service announcement earlier this week, “trying to reassure people that we are at it and we are capable of dealing with these situations.”
He said, “The Church does not want anarchy.” “We are calling for an orderly process by which those in great need can find a way into our country.”
More than 1,000 migrants gathered outside the Sacred Heart shelter alone earlier this week. Mora said authorities closed the road in front of it last Sunday, fearing another fatality, where migrants were driven to Brownsville, Texas.
For some expatriates the dates are set within a month of their arrival in the cities they are hoping to go to. Others’ court appearances are not scheduled until 2026 or later, as the asylum system strains under historic backlogs.
Wearing a rosary like a necklace, Gallagher, in June 2025, in Orlando, Florida, where she hopes to reach a family member, meditates on Juanaila Castillo of Venezuela as she explains her court date heard from.
Gallagher told her she would need legal help to file an asylum application within a year – or she would lose the temporary relief she had from deportation.
With their three children, ages 8, 7 and 3, they traveled through the notoriously dangerous Darien jungle in Panama. After two months on the road, she too passed through a hole in the wall near El Paso and was detained for six days before being released at the St. Francis Xavier shelter.
“I still can’t believe it,” she said as her children watched pigeons chirping in the shelter’s small, shady courtyard. “I have never lost faith, never, but am a stray, relying on God.”
In a hall set up with cots and tables, Susie Roman, a volunteer at the shelter, said she has seen how confused migrants have become by changing policies, and fears the consequences of the latest switch.
“I’m afraid they’re all going out, and we can’t help them,” she said.