The children enter the room in a burst of laughter and smiles. “ Hola, bueñas tardes,” a boy says, throwing his arms around Father Arturo Bañuelas, pastor of St. Pius.
They
sing, say a prayer and glue colorful tissue paper to butterfly designs,
waving their art in the air as volunteers prepare grilled cheese, fish
sticks and Capri Sun.
It is a joyful scene that belies the
circumstances that created this gathering in a building across the
street from Bañuelas’ church, a few blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border.
The 15 children, ages 5 to 8, were picked up by authorities as they
tried to cross without their parents.
“Where are you from, Emely?” Bañuelas asks a 7-year-old in a
yellow shirt and pigtails. “From Honduras,” she replies in soft-spoken
Spanish. She traveled with a 16-year-old cousin, trying to reach her
mother, who arrived in the U.S. illegally five years ago.
“I spent
four nights in the desert,” says a boy, telling about frightening
wolves and running from Border Patrol. “I had cactus thorns on my feet.”
Across
town, a peasant woman rests at a shelter. She recently fled Mexico and
the drug cartel hitmen who murdered her husband, oldest daughter and
2-year-old grandson because the husband refused to work as a mule,
carrying drugs through the desert into Arizona.
These are the overlooked faces of immigration.
The
political debate, and the heat and rhetoric that go along with it,
focuses on jobs and security. But in El Paso, the human side is
inescapable.
Here, families torn apart by deportations struggle
to stay connected, while in the shadow of the border a happier struggle
plays out in the sounds of people learning the names of presidents in
order to pass a test to become a U.S. citizen. Border town
This city of 665,000 was at the vanguard of border enforcement in the mid 1990s but now seems to collectively shout: enough.
The
conversation is increasingly focused on how the buildup has hurt
business and family ties with the city a short way over the border,
Ciudad Juarez.
“To pretend that somehow their reality is not
connected to what’s going on in our country is totally unjust,” said
Ruben Garcia. He runs Annunciation House, a shelter for immigrants
fleeing violence situated not far from Juarez’s maquiladoras, assembly plants that pay wages a fraction of what workers earn in the United States.
Most
of the people at Annunciation House are seeking asylum but U.S policies
are less generous to Latin America and favor more political hotspots
such as Cuba and China. Only two out of every 100 Mexican applications
for asylum are granted, said Garcia, an intense man who does not mince
words.
“All of this border enforcement has been a strategy to
satisfy the political constituency in the northern part of the U.S.,” he
said.
The feeling is not uncommon in El Paso, where 80 percent of
the population is Mexican-American, but feelings toward immigration and
border security are, of course, noticeably different than other areas
of the Southwest, where fences are little deterrent to human and drug
smuggling.
On a crusade
While
some here say legalizing drugs would ease the problem, Bañuelas crusades
against them, seeing a direct connection to violence across the border
and why people will do anything to enter the United States. He’s
performed funerals for the victims and noticed the police outside,
watching for signs of retribution. He once had to ask the parish to help
raise $70,000 ransom for a woman kidnapped in Juarez.
“The issue for us spiritually is not to live in fear, that from
the blood of all this pain and suffering has got to emerge a better kind
of human being that looks at itself and says, ’What happened to us?’ ”
A
picture hangs on the wall of the building where Bañuelas greeted the
immigrant children. It’s of his 11-year-old nephew, Rico, who was gunned
down by robbers in 2008 while on vacation in Mexico with his mother.
Rico’s
memory and the struggles of the children who trek across the border
motivate Norma Lugan, who runs a Lutheran charity program that helps
reconnect the children with their parents.
Though overall
immigrant crossings are down sharply in recent years, unaccompanied
children are a growing issue. In 2008, about 8,000 were apprehended at
the border; last year there were nearly 24,500, mostly from Mexico, El
Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Experts point to a change in Mexican policy, which has allowed more children to pass through.
Diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, Lugan said, “These kids give me life. I can’t let it go.”
A presidential visit
President
Barack Obama visited El Paso in May 2011 to make the case for
comprehensive immigration reform. He boasted how secure the border has
become, a doubling of patrol agents since 2004 and hundreds of miles of
fence (the mention of which elicited some boos from the audience,
including Father Bañuelas), and talked compassionately about the people
who crossed the border illegally or overstayed visas.
“Regardless
of how they came, the overwhelming majority of these folks are just
trying to earn a living and provide for their families,” Obama said to
applause. “But we have to acknowledge they’ve broken the rules. They’ve
cut in front of the line. And what is also true is that the presence of
so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are trying
to immigrate legally.”
Obama spoke on a Monday. The weekend
before, Mariana Amaya, 45, made her regular trip to Juarez. It’s the
only way she can see her husband, who a few years ago was pulled over in
a traffic stop in New Mexico and deported.
Under Obama,
deportations have reached record levels — 1.5 million in 2011 — ridding
the country of criminals but also tearing apart law-abiding families.
“The
government punished him,” said Amaya, who works in a restaurant in La
Mesa, N.M., and is a permanent U.S. resident. She said her husband could
have paid a fine but with a lawyer on top, it was too much.
So
she waits to see how her husband might fare if politicians in Washington
pass long-elusive immigration reform. “Are they going to pardon the
people who have been punished?” she asked.
Immigration politics
While
the political climate for reform is as favorable as it has been in
years, it is also complex — a battle between rule of law and compassion.
Consider that the last time comprehensive immigration laws were enacted
was 1986, under President Ronald Reagan.
“He was one of the best,
besides Kennedy or Lincoln,” said Arturo Benitez, 69, laughing. Having
arrived illegally in 1964, Benitez became a permanent legal resident in
1990.
At a charity center in downtown El Paso, in the shadow of
the razor wire and guards and long lines at the border, Benitez helps
other immigrants study to take the U.S. citizenship test. A short,
kind-looking man with dark hair, he paced back and forth on a recent
Saturday morning, going to a dry erase board to write the names of
presidents and senators.
Halfway through the class, a cake was cut
and Styrofoam cups of soda were sent around. Soledad Mendia, 55, had
learned a few days earlier that she passed her test, becoming the 279th
person Benitez has helped.
“I’m proud of them and myself,” Benitez
said. “People from Central and South America come to work. They don’t
come as terrorists. With the drug trafficking, it’s hard for the U.S. I
understand that. But I love the United States. I never had the
opportunity in Mexico that I have here.”
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