We visited a ‘small’ shelter for migrants inside Piedras Negras.
Today, there were ‘only’ 104 refugees coming from Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras, and Guatemala.
This shelter is run by catholic nuns. There was a legal room, doctors without borders temporary canopy, a large kitchen, a cafeteria, two dormitories for womyn and children, one for men, and a large cement plaza where most of the people there slept on the hard floor of the plaza with maybe a blanket or two for padding.
Up until December, the nuns took care of 1000 migrants a day. They said the number has diminished drastically daily. Most of the people staying there either have or are applying to have their CBP One appointments.
We learn that on average, it takes 7 – that’s SEVEN – months to get an appointment.
I wish everyone could meet these people, so exhausted, sick, injured, and see how deyermined and how hard this journey has been – yet so trusting, believing all they are suffering will be worth it once they can enter the u.s.
How could anyone with any ounce of compassion deny entry into our wealthy country, deny a life maybe a tiny bit better than the one they are fleeing, deny a person so willing to work harder than probable 99% of u.s. people in order to be here?
These incredible, heart-wrenching, beautiful murals were recently painted on the walls of the shelter by migrants, both deported and those waiting for asylum.
The journey, walking, by train with the military and/or border patrol hovering in the helicopter overhead, terrifying and scattering refugees, often getting them separated from their families and/group and the guide.
