Posted on 07/08/2014 3:28:26 PM PDT by robowombat
'Army of Christians' Ready to Help Migrant Children
By Heather Sells CBN News Reporter Tuesday, July 08, 2014
McALLEN, Texas -- Some churches in Texas are frustrated because they want to help the flood of immigrant children that have crossed the border into America this year. But they're still waiting to hear just how the federal government will use them.
Many churches in the Lone Star State, especially those on the border, have known for months about the tidal wave of immigrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Border Patrol agents have already detained more than 50,000 kids this year. Children as young as 6 years old are crossing on their own, spurred on in many cases by parents hoping they can escape chronic violence or poverty or both.
Most of the children come from three countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
What will happen to these children in the coming months? CBN News' Heather Sells addressed that issue and more on CBN News Today, July 8.
At the annual meeting of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas this month, leaders from 1,100 congregations expressed concern for the safety and salvation of these children, as well as frustration over their lack of access.
Although Baptist leaders have worked with the Obama administration for weeks, they've not received any clear guidance as to what role churches will be able to play in ministering to the unaccompanied children.
Gus Reyes, director of the Christian Life Commission for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, says churches are ready to help now.
"We have an army of chaplains," he told CBN News. "We have an army of disaster-relief trained people. We have an army of children's ministers and leaders who have background checks who are ready to come. We have an army of medical physicians and nurses and dentists that are believers who are just ready to give their time."
In the border town of McAllen, Pastor Chad Mason of Calvary Baptist Church works the phones daily trying to find ways to help the immigrant children and fielding calls from churches and individuals that want to help.
He knows first-hand of the need because many Border Patrol agents worship at his church and others in the community.
"They tell us the stories of kids that are in their care who are traumatized by what they've seen or are incredibly impoverished," Mason told CBN News.
"And we wonder, 'How are you dealing with that?' because we know Border Patrol is not designed to be a childcare facility -- they're designed to be police officers," he said.
With the current surge and resulting backlog, Border Patrol agents are detaining kids for as many as 14 days, a condition that human rights activists say is unacceptable.
By law, however, agents cannot quickly return unaccompanied child immigrants from Central America to their home countries. They must screen them as potential trafficking victims or refugees.
That process leaves thousands of kids stranded in Border Patrol stations for days and later in Health and Human Services facilities for possibly months.
"That's what breaks our hearts," Mason said. "We know that there's a need and at this point we have no access to try and care for that need."
Churches in the Rio Grande Valley are cooperating to minister to adult immigrants and their children who have crossed the border.
After Border Patrol agents initially detain them they release the families at bus stations in border towns like McAllen and Brownsville. With their deportation hearings months away, they are free to go until their hearing date.
At that point, these immigrants are usually in need of food, clothing, and sometimes medical care after perilous journeys from their home countries to the border.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, leads the effort.
"We don't forsee this ending anytime very soon," she said.
This week, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) has begun a campaign to work with Latin American churches to warn parents not to send their children to the United States.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez is president of NHCLC/Conela, which represents more than 40,000 Hispanic evangelical churches in the United States and 500,000 worldwide.
He warned unaccompanied children here could fall victim to the same drug gangs that threaten them in Central America.
In the meantime, Texas churches are standing by, ready to help those who have come and will come.
"In the future we'll have to figure out what's right and wrong and those kinds of things," Reyes said. "But biblically we're going to love people right now."
God also let Israel be invaded when they didn’t follow His commandments.
I say so-called Christians because what Christian would enable a war against their homeland?
Lawlessness is of the Evil One.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Sounds like churches are helping this scam, what`s up with that?
A preacher's wife was brutally raped by the teenager they hosted. Several members of the congregation were angered when she called the police and pressed charges. They believed the “Christian” thing for her to do would be to forgive him and let him stay.
I tried to find the story but it seems to have disappeared down the “memory whole.”
This is MY COUNTRY paid for by the blood and sweat of my ancestors and yours truly. It doesn't belong in any minuscule way to border jumping invaders of any age. WE HATE THEM and want them gone from our sacred soil. None are too many You know we don't care. Our country is being stolen. Mean spirited? H-ll it should be huge angry surging mobs so big that the federal uniformed goons would have to run for their lives under a barrage of brickbats, bolts, concrete chunks and molotov cocktails. The invader buses should be rolled over and the invaders chased down the road. our country is being stolen by the liberal maggots. this is war and it doesn't matter what CNN and the NY Slime or whatever journalistic scum want to make of it. Americans need to put the fear or real force in huge numbers into those who would invade us and the Quislings who would aid and enable them.
Liberals are true filth.
The problem is it isn’t just liberals. The Baptists have their amnesty agenda in high places in the GOP. “Conservatives” like Lankford and Gowdy are ready to pound us with amnesty when the time is right.
My wife was really embarrassed when I fairly snarled at one of the deacons who said something about needing to be compassionate with the border jumpers and how we needed to apply Christian principles to the immigration question. I was loud and said “We don't need them. Any of them. It is our country not theirs. They need to be sent back all of them.’ He went red faced and stammering the wife grabbed me and towed me to the car. This crap has to be fought in a very direct way.
Not to mention the Christians that are vilified by the left daily are expected to take care of the children brought here by the liberals for political purposes. Sickest thing I have ever seen. I have heard the government is actually calling churches and asking for help- which would make sense if this wasn’t an organized political scam, and if this administration didn’t hate Christians so badly.
It is all a game to our corrupt politicians, they do not care at all that they are using actual living children as game pieces. I guess we should expect no different from the party that not only supports but promotes abortion.
I may differ with some or many- but I have no issue with the churches helping and I will help through my church. The children did not ask for this and they are truly in the middle of a mess not of their making.
What i wish was done to some of the political class can’t be printed here as there are laws about issuing threats. I only wish that the rail and the tar barrel were more familiar to Americans. For the rest, I loath these cockroaches invading our country. They have no business here and it is that simple.
This is just too much. So you stood up to a Deacon. You were in church and yet you openly admit HATRED for the kids? Wow. Seriously, where is the hatred coming from? It ain’t from the Holy Bible I read (please feel free to cite all relevant passages; I’d certainly love to read them). You may disagree, but hatred? Let me guess, you would definitely NOT err on the side of grace.
So now you’re admitting you’re cowardly and don’t want to upset the apple cart of politics. “The big mean government could come and arrest me so I better not make them angry. Oh, and there’s laws against it.” Think there’s no laws against violence towards non-government types too? Hurting the kids will not solve the problem and you know it, and yet you advocate it.
Who is Ed and Ann?
It was outside on the way to the parking lot. I would have liked to have punched this fat, self satisfied car selling jackass in his saggy face. He thinks Jimmy Carter is someone we should model ourselves on. I never cared much for the mushy social Christian sorts who love to cite the parable of the Prodigal Son. (Why the church let that one stay in the Scripture is a mystery to me.) People like this fellow are Quislings, which is one of the things I told he he and his ilk were. Quislings are traitors pure and simple. And where is the rage coming from, well lets see. I have lived in a turd world country and I see the maggot politicians and the Chamber of commerce types working night and day to make the US another turd world sewer. That is why.
Hurting invaders and their enablers is not a bad thing. Unless the Mahdi shuts his operation down I do hope this will grow more and more violent and that some real mass folk justice can be administered.
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