For months now, immigration authorities have been arresting people who cross the border to request asylum, holding them in detention for several days, and then releasing them by the busload on the doorsteps of charities and churches in nearby cities.
Yesterday we heard a description of that process from a volunteer who’s been working to temporarily shelter and assist these asylum seekers in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Today I was happy to learn the latest developments from a Catholic charity doing similar work in El Paso, Texas: Annunciation House.
Per the Annunciation House website:
Close to 100 years old, somewhat dilapidated, located on the fringe of El Paso’s biggest barrio, and some ten blocks from the US/ Mexico border, this two-story, red brick building has been home to thousands of refugees and migrant poor. This building, this house of hospitality, this sanctuary, is known as Annunciation House.
In the winter of 1976, a small group of young adults first gathered to consider and discuss the possibility of undertaking a journey that would one day be known as Annunciation House. Their gathering was fostered by a desire to experience the Gospel more deeply. Especially strong was the realization that the Gospel calls us all to the poor and that the life and presence of Jesus in the Gospels is so completely in relation to the poor.
For over one year this small group met weekly for prayer, discussion, and discernment. Little by little the principles that would guide Annunciation House came into being. Whatever was done, it would have to be in solidarity with the poor. The lifestyle would be simple and lived in community. Any work or service would be offered freely. Those accepting this journey would be volunteers, receiving no pay or wages. In order to better understand the insecurity and instability with which the poor live, it would never be possible to seek or accept permanent funding sources.
And so, 33 years later, the volunteers of Annunciation House are continuing to live that original mission by providing shelter and care for the most vulnerable at the U.S.-Mexico border. As the need has grown, so has their work: they’re creating a new hospitality center for the sole purpose of welcoming migrants and helping them on the next step of their journey toward asylum.
You can see that center below in a video produced this week by the El Paso Times. I’ve also transcribed a portion of the audio, an explanation given by Annunciation House’s director, Ruben Garcia.
Annunciation House Opens 125,000 Square Foot Migrant Center in El Paso
MARK R LAMBIE
10:28 p.m. MDT Apr. 24, 2019
El Paso Times
https://www.elpasotimes.com/videos/news/2019/04/24/annunciation-house-opens-125-000-square-foot-migrant-center-el-paso/3567708002/
Annunciation House has been making use of hotels as one of the ways of trying to receive all of the refugees that are being released.
As all of you know, the numbers are, between El Paso and Las Cruces, the numbers are clearly in the thousand per day range, and that’s what we’re seeing released in the two cities.
Annunciation House has been making use of hotels, and that has become prohibitively expensive, and we need to find a way to stop using the hotels while at the same time trying to find a way to increase the capacity. And so the idea of finding a building that we could then convert into a hospitality site came about, and we’ve been working on it.
And so this is the building. It’s a warehouse that is little by little being converted into a hospitality site.
We presently have 500 cots and we’re using only part of the building. Eventually our hope is that we will be able to accommodate somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 refugees upon their release.
And as you go through you’re going to see many more examples of the artwork that has been done on the building that is little by little really changing the feel and the spirit of this building.
