Jesuits seek deeper understanding of immigration in bi-national border project

By J.D. Long-Garcîa | January 22, 2009 | The Catholic Sun

NOGALES, Mexico — When Leoba Marcos crossed the Sonoran desert last month, she didn’t know what to expect.

She made her way with a group of 20 or so, including her husband, 13-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. It was the second time Marcos had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

This time, she crossed via Sonoita, Mexico, a border town south of Lukeville, Ariz. The group, led by a smuggler, had walked about six hours before U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended them.

“They were hiding,” Marcos said, shaking her head. “We didn’t say anything and we didn’t run. They just took us to a detention center.”

Marcos and her children were deported to Nogales, but her husband was deported to Mexicali — more than a five-hour drive away. While she waited for her husband, Marcos and her children found refuge in a shelter for deported women and children run by the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist.

The sisters are part of the Kino Border Initiative, a bi-national effort headed up by the California Province of the Society of Jesus. The joint effort will staff a care center for a growing number of deported migrants, serve as a contact point for numerous humanitarian organizations working on the border and educate the community on immigration issues.

“The Kino Border Initiative is an important step in responding to the deportation of those who have been asked to leave the country, to make sure that their departure is safe, that they are cared for,” said Tucson Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas during a Jan. 18 press conference at Sacred Heart Parish in Nogales, Ariz.

The initiative, which began last month, will work closely with the bishops of the Diocese of Tucson and the Archdiocese of Hermosillo, Mexico, as well as with Jesuit Refugee Services.

Jesuit Father John McGarry, provincial of the California province, said the effort takes on the spirit of its namesake, Fr. Eusebio Francisco Kino, a 17^th century Jesuit missionary that served in Sonora.

“We Jesuits are committed to the poor, the immigrant, the disenfranchised,” he said. “The beginning of this new ministry and service to the Church and to people in need is a concrete sign to that commitment.”

Fr. McGarry said the initiative would apply the Jesuit’s intellectual charism to immigration and make it “more humane and just.”

The initiative will study immigration on the border and document migrants’ stories from their journey to the border to their capture by the Border Patrol.

“The complex issue of immigration is first and foremost about people — God’s people and their lives, their dignity and their livelihood,” he said. The initiative “is designed to accompany the migrant people, especially those deported and alone, to serve them — to serve them and help them, particularly women and children.”

Araceli Wedington tried entering the United States illegally when she was eight months pregnant. She was trying to make it back to her family in Kansas. Two of her children live there with her husband, a U.S. citizen.

Wedington had unexpectedly received divorce papers while she was in Mexico and hastened her return. She crossed alone.

When she came across a group, she would first hide and then follow at a distance. Wedington, who first crossed in Tijuana five years ago, knew that many border crossers are robbed and many women are raped.

At one point on the journey, Wedington fell and, fearing she was going into labor, sat near a highway and waited for Border Patrol to find her. She was brought to the hospital, but deported before having the baby.

“I wanted to be [in Kansas], but they didn’t accept my story,” she said of the Border Patrol agents. “I wanted to speak to my husband, but they didn’t believe me.”

Wedington found her way to the sisters’ women’s shelter and eventually gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Victor Emmanuel.

To get to the shelter, she climbs four stories of dusty, concrete steps. The apartment itself has common area, a small kitchen and two bedrooms — each crammed with two sets of bunk beds.

“The women who have come to stay here have been abandoned, they’re hungry and thirsty and they have blisters on their feet,” Wedington said. “When the women arrive, they don’t know what to do. They don’t have any money, they don’t have any food and our families don’t know what’s become of us.”

The women’s shelter, Wedington said, gives women a chance to think and reflect on what they will do next. Just being there for deported migrants is a focus for the Kino Border Initiative.

“A lot of people are suffering,” said Jesuit Father Sean Carroll, executive director of the initiative. He noted an increased number of deportees finding their way to the care center, known as el Comedor, where deported migrants can get a hot meal and help with medical needs.

“We’re serving a lot of people,” he said. “We want to respond to them and relieve that suffering and through that we hope to also be transformed.”

Fr. Cayetano Cabrera, pastor of Cristo Rey Parish in Nogales, Mexico, said U.S. economic troubles are pushing many migrants back to Mexico. But, he said, those who return don’t find work in Mexico either.

Sandra Luz de la Cruz, a single mother of three from Chiapas, entered the United States illegally to support her family. She’d spent six years in Arizona before being pulled over on her way to the pharmacy.

“You don’t know when, or how, but you could be deported anytime,” she said. “That’s the fear we life with, because you never know.”

“We earn our keep with sweat on our brow,” Cruz said. “In Chiapas, there’s no work. There’s no factory. There’s nothing.”

Still, Cruz said she wouldn’t try to cross the border again.

As the sun set, Marcos took down towels from the clothesline outside the women’s shelter. Her three-year-old daughter, Brenda Alexandra, darted beneath the hanging clothes.

“Men are afraid to ask for help,” Marcos said to Missionary Sister of the Eucharist Imelda Ruiz. “But I tell my husband, ‘that’s what they’re here for.’”

Marcos expected her husband to arrive in Nogales in the next couple days. She explained to Sr. Imelda that there was no work in Oaxaca and that the family owed money. Sr. Imelda knew what was next: the family would cross again.