Posted on 05/26/2008 9:08:55 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Wading the Rio Grande at Eagle Pass after a harrowing, weeks-long journey through three countries, Devis hopped a train that brought him to San Antonio.
The 25-year-old Honduran knew landing work here wouldn't be too hard. A much harder task was finding a place to stay in a city where he didn't know anyone.
A night at a homeless shelter among drug addicts and alcoholics was scary. Another on a park bench didn't provide much sleep. He was about to leave for Houston in search of estranged relatives when someone pointed him to Misión Cristiana Internacional, an immigrant shelter on the West Side.
“This place has been a blessing,” Devis said last week in the rundown home where he has shared a room with two other men for two months. “I wouldn't have stayed in this city without a safe place to live.”
San Antonio is home to several shelters practicing the religious tradition of welcoming the stranger, most operating below society's radar because some or all of their guests are in the country illegally.
A newly formed activist group — Grupo Romo, named for St. Toribio Romo of Mexico, whose name is often invoked by unauthorized border crossers praying for successful passage — is on a sanctuary mission, motivated by faith mixed with a dose of politics. Its members want to connect the shelters with community leaders and volunteers to form a service network for undocumented immigrants in San Antonio.
The practice is reminiscent of the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, when thousands of Central Americans were helped into the country after escaping civil wars at home. But that effort faded, especially after the government's post-9-11 immigration crackdown.
Today it is less overt, unstructured and discreet, with churches and shelters taking in people when they knock at the door.
Immigrants have quietly found their way to Miguel De Los Santos' door for more than two decades.
When his marriage dissolved in 1987, he bought an adjacent smaller house, intending to sell his first home. But before he could put it on the market, his church asked him to host three Guatemalan men who had just arrived in the city.
A steady stream of undocumented migrants began arriving, De Los Santos said. They have not stopped since.
The effort seemed doomed early on when Border Patrol agents showed up, saying someone had reported illegal activity. But when the agents saw people praying in a chapel in the house, they advised De Los Santos to get registered as a nonprofit religious mission and put up a sign. He complied and agents never showed up again.
“I'm not afraid because I believe God protects this house,” De Los Santos said.
He has not been able to afford repairs and admits it has become decrepit. Utilities and basic upkeep depend on the $27 weekly rent he collects from guests, who sleep in three bedrooms and on mattresses strewn on the floor.
They're on their own for food. There's a kitchen, but most of the guests opt for takeout from taquerías nearby. De Los Santos said immigrants' average stay is about a month — there's no time limit— and about 10 to 15 live there at any one time.
Drugs and alcohol are forbidden, and no one is allowed in or out after 10:30 p.m. Besides house chores based on rotation, all guests must attend a nightly Bible study and two religious services on Sunday, held in a chapel that seats more than 30 inside the house.
The clean-cut lifestyle suits migrants fine, they said — helping them save, instead of squander, their money.
“Everybody does their own thing, nobody bothers anybody,” said Marcial, 38, who has lived in the shelter for nearly a year after leaving Guatemala. He and other unauthorized migrants agreed to interviews as long as their full names weren't revealed.
Sheltered community
At Casa Guadalupe, the goal is not just shelter but to build a small community. Also on the West Side, it is owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio and once was a home to nuns.
Casa Guadalupe is the continuation of Projecto Hospitalidad, a refuge founded during the original Sanctuary Movement by longtime San Antonio activist Laura Sánchez, who did not respond to several interview requests.
Sánchez closed the shelter several years ago as her health began deteriorating, said Juanita Dávila, a current volunteer who worked with her.
The revived shelter, which primarily hosts undocumented immigrants who are injured or ill and who call the place Casita, opened in 2006 after longtime volunteers tapped Phillip Ley, a Franciscan priest, to find a new location and direct it.
Dávila distributed leaflets to area hospitals and clinics, offering to pick up disabled immigrants who otherwise would be put on the street.
Unlike Sánchez's house, which was blessed by then-Archbishop Patrick Flores, the new place has received lukewarm approval from current church leadership.
“It's not like it used to be,” said Tom O'Brien, a retired surgeon who continues to provide free medical help to shelter guests. “We weren't discouraged by the church, but we haven't had the financial cooperation we used to get. Times have changed across the whole country.”
Archbishop José Gomez, who took over the archdiocese in February 2005, favors reforming the national immigration system so immigrants can come legally, but he's against illegal immigration.
Gomez said Casa Guadalupe is neither a diocesan ministry nor a sanctuary for unauthorized migrants — simply a temporary roof for those without one. “We practice Christian charity by giving them a place to stay the night,” he said.
But to Ley and other shelter volunteers, unauthorized immigrants have become the most vulnerable and needy social pariahs. “To cross the border may be illegal, but it's not immoral,” said Ley, who did missionary work in Central America for seven years in the 1990s.
The shelter has 10 beds in four bedrooms and has kept an average of six guests, traditionally men although recently an exception was made to take in an injured woman.
Casa Guadalupe also has rules — no drugs or alcohol, house chores and a strict curfew. Ley leads a mandatory weekly service on Saturday evenings in a makeshift chapel converted from a small shed.
Everything in the house is donated, from furniture to appliances. Volunteers cook lunch, but guests are responsible for other meals. They don't have to pay rent and there's no limit on their stay.
Most tend to stick around for a while, since they're usually in bad shape on arrival.
Rosario and her cousin trekked from El Salvador through Mexico and crossed into Texas. Unable to walk farther, they tried to jump onto a train in Eagle Pass, but Rosario fell, breaking a leg.
She waited for hours until her cousin returned with help. They were driven to a Border Patrol checkpoint and Rosario was flown to University Hospital in San Antonio.
Doctors had to amputate her leg up to the knee. After three weeks, she was discharged on crutches with nowhere to go. A hospital cleaning woman told her about Casa Guadalupe.
“This place has provided nothing but support and love, like a new home,” said Rosario, who's trying to bring her 8-year-old son here because he needs a bone marrow transplant and can't get it back home.
Family life
Though most shelters focus on individuals, other religious-based programs in San Antonio give immigrant families a chance to stay together. They don't work solely with immigrants, but they won't turn them away — even if they're in the country illegally.
Visitation House, a shelter operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, offers immigrant mothers a chance to escape domestic abuse, typically involving a husband or boyfriend threatening to call immigration agents if they complain.
Guests can stay as long as they apply for permanent residency through a clause in the Violence Against Women Act, said Sister Yolanda Tarango, the shelter's director.
Pending their immigration court cases, they learn English, take the GED and complete a certification program, such as nursing, she said. Cases that don't fit the profile, she noted, are referred to Catholic Worker House, an independent homeless shelter that hosts entire families no matter their origin.
“I don't think Jesus asked for identification,” said Jim Batterton, coordinator of the downtown program that involves guests and volunteers living together. “I don't see any reason to be fearful of people who come here to work.”
Double amputee Jesús Carranza went from nearly dying to owning the home he shares with his wife and kids while working for an office cleaning company.
He would not have made it had it not been for Casita and its volunteers, said Carranza, a Salvadoran who lost his legs after falling off a train in Cotulla in 1999.
When he heard Casa Guadalupe was reopening, he signed up to help. He drops by frequently, giving pep talks to migrants facing long recoveries from injuries.
“I tell them not to feel sad, because they don't know how lucky they are,” said Carranza, 38, now a legal resident.
Hernán Rozemberg is the Express-News immigration writer.
A faith-based approach to undocumented immigration[South Texas]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2021218/posts
Any church that harbors criminal aliens should be shut down and its members involved in hiding them imprisoned.
As in ILLEGAL immigrants?
Jaysus, call a spade a spade will ya?
Part 2 ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
United States of America. 2008.
Shouldn’t this have come with a “BARF ALERT”?
South Texas
These are no longer churches as they are politicized. Therefore they no longer can claim sanctuary status.
Definitely! Churches should not advocate crimmigration when they are commanded to submit to the governing authorities.
As in “illegal aliens”.
Websters definition of moral - 1 a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior.
Gee, and all along I've been thinking breaking the law was wrong behavior. But I'm sure the definition was rewritten by some professor in Ley’s past, so I stand corrected.
Agreed. Additionally, their sponsoring hierarchies should lose all semblance of any tax exempt status thus far attained. These people (illegal immigrants) are criminals and their ‘abettors’ belong in the same criminal class - Religion does not qualify for breaking the lawful requirements of their government, period!
These ratholes should be shut down.
Any church that knowingly harbors criminal aliens with the intent to resist or prevent enforcement of U.S. immigration law should be shut down and its members involved in hiding them finedimprisoned.
Fixed it for you. Any institution or individual that knowingly harbors an individual or individuals illegally present in the United States is aiding and abetting a crime. That said, the present immigration and citizenship law is as tangled and twisted as taw law, largely because the Congress uses both to conduct social engineering experiments.
The United States ought to phase out most discretionary social spending at the federal level, in favor of decentralized programs at the state and local levels run by local communities and charitable organizations. And, we should set up Ellis Island style checkpoints at points of entry (our land borders, at seaports, and at airports) where visitors and immigrants are given health screenings. Immigration (of prospective permanent residents) should subject to annual quotas (based on the population of the origin nationality as a percentage of the worldwide population), as well as skills, education, and potential employment. Then, we can talk about establishing guest worker programs.
That's tax law, not taw law. My error.
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