When Lourdes, her husband and their two children, ages 6 and 9, arrived at the border in the middle of the December cold, tired and hungry, they were going to sleep in a park, but they received support from Juárez, remembers the Central American mother .
For three months, the family originally from San Pedro Sula has been supported every week with a pantry by the Ministry for Migrants of the Missionary Society of San Columbano, in the dining room located in the offices of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Ciudad Juárez .
“Here they help us, every eight days they give us (a pantry), here they give us a little bit of everything,” said Lourdes, 41 years old, while waiting to receive the pantry that last week included eggs, soups, cans of vegetables and tomatoes, beans, rice and sanitary towels, among other items.
According to Cristina Coronado, coordinator of the Ministry for Migrants of the Missionary Society of San Columbano, until a few weeks ago there were approximately 130 families that they supported each week, but more than half of them have already entered the United States through an appointment. managed through the CBP One digital application.
“On Wednesdays we had 56 (beneficiaries), but the majority have already crossed; On Wednesday we were just going to give six pantries and 14 new families arrived, and we gave 20; “We gave 14 to new people who have only been here for days or a week,” she reported.
Due to the proclamation issued by President Joe Biden, under sections “212(f)” and “215(a)” of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to restrict asylum applications to most irregular migrants , more people have begun to stay at the border to wait for an appointment from CBP One and estimates that more people will come seeking help.
Meanwhile, he estimated that between Wednesday and Friday of last week they provided more than 50 meals, among them to Lourdes’ family, who waited for their food while her husband ate spaghetti with meat and her children ate and then played with those responsible for La Jugarreta, a program that carries out recreational activities with minors on the move in humanitarian spaces.
“We left on November 3, I arrived here in Juárez on December 16, it’s been six months now. In my country it is dangerous, there is a lot of crime, two years ago my sister was killed, my nephew disappeared, the truth is that it is not an easy life, what we have gone through is not easy. Sometimes, sometimes one tries to seek refuge elsewhere, because of the same thing that happens in one’s country, and the truth is that it is very dangerous there, in the neighborhood where we lived, minors disappear as if they were nothing, and that’s how they stay,” he said.
In Honduras her husband had a fruit stand, but he was extorted to pay a fee, which, combined with the loss of his sister and nephew, made them leave for the United States.
“Don’t believe, my family is in danger in Honduras, there my mother, my brothers, my four oldest children, they stayed due to lack of money to be able to travel, but first of all, God, now in the United States we can help the family. Life brought us, God came with us and God put us here, and here we have been, as long as we have been here in Juárez, the people have been good to us,” he shared.
The woman recalled that the day they arrived in Juárez it was 11:00 at night, “it was very cold, we arrived by train, we traveled by train for seven days, we arrived at a small park and it was 11:00, the police arrived. They asked us quite a few questions, of course, we were immigrants, we didn’t have documents and the children were in bed… they wanted to attack my husband, but I told them: no, we come dead of sleep, dead of hunger and we bring the children. The children? they said. “They hadn’t seen them.”
A police officer went to see if it was true that there were children lying down, “he said: get up the children, get up the children. Well, we got up, the children, in the middle of that cold. They (the police) calmed down, they called someone, they came and brought us food and they themselves asked the people to take us to the shelter, to the plane, to the tents. They supported us in that, they left us there and we were there in the tents for four months,” he said.
In April, when the municipal and federal governments were going to close the temporary shelter known as “the tents,” they took the migrants out, and so they lived for a few days in a school where her husband works.
“He had already been working with his employer in a school for about a month, it was during Easter, they were on vacation and the man let us stay there for a while, thank God, because God always provides good people who have supported us. When the children were going to start classes again we already had a room, we already moved to the room, there we paid for two months and we met the pastoral family and they offered us help, and thank God because they are good people, they offered us a room, with a bathroom and everything inside, and there we are,” he commented.
Without getting an appointment to enter the United States through the CBP One application, the family had decided to stay in Juárez, but the National Immigration Institute (INM) denied them temporary permission; However, two days later they made the appointment to cross the border.
“We were requesting the appointment for CBP One and it already came out for July. We had already requested it for about five months and it didn’t work out, we deleted the record and did it again and it came out after a month and 17 days. I said, if it is from God, then God is going to give it to us and if not, then we are going to settle papers here. We requested a work permit, but they did not want to give us the permit, they denied us the work permit, but two days later we got an appointment. It came out on June 12,” he said.
The family goes to Indianapolis, where Lourdes has had a sister for 20 years, which fills them with emotion, since in addition to feeling safer, they seek to support their family from there.
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