Washington, DC – Maribel and Mayra are two Honduran women seeking safety for their children, and they have so much more in common: gang violence and victimization; threatened children; robbery in Mexico; and a faith community stepping up to help advocate for their safety. Their stories show that there is a true refugee crisis taking place in Central America, and that the official U.S. response is wrong. The more that U.S. policy represses and rejects this reality, the more human lives are lost.
Catholic News Service relates the story of Maribel, a Honduran Garifuna woman extorted by gangs: “‘They put a gun to my head and took all I had,’ Maribel said. She eventually stopped paying. Then the gang came looking for her 16-year-old daughter. Maribel saved her money and left Honduras with her family.”
CNS quotes Sister Diana Munoz Alba, a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary who works at a Chiapas migrant shelter:
Migrants don’t come here because they want to. Migrants leave their country because they don’t have any other alternative. (There’s) a paradox of risking their lives to save their lives, and this militarization (of Mexico) is not going to stop migration.
In Mexico there is no safety: Maribel and her children were violently robbed, again. She and her children remain there for now, but their lives are in a state of upheaval impossible to imagine, unless you have been through it.
Similarly, John Garland, Pastor of San Antonio Mennonite Fellowship, writes in Christianity Today about Mayra and her father Jorge.
Gangs murdered Mayra’s brothers, sister, and pastor in Honduras. They tried to force Mayra to serve as a lookout. She refused and fled to the United States with her children the next day.
In Mexico, Mayra and her children were held and robbed by traffickers; her eldest daugher “was being groomed for sex.” The family escaped and was able to make it to the San Antonio Mennonite Church in Texas, which is sheltering their physical bodies and their spirits as they continue to make their asylum claims.
Mayra’s father Jorge, however, was not so lucky.
He tried to bring his orphaned grandchildren, whose parents had been murdered, to safety too. When Jorge arrived at the U.S. border, the children were taken from him. Jorge was deported. Garland writes:
All migrants fleeing danger experience varying levels of trauma and violence. We hear stories of hunger, rape, murder, and torture. They desperately want to pray, to hear words of encouragement and blessing. When we encounter them, they often ask to read the Bible, and they often memorize significant verses. Our church’s program, called Semillas, aims to equip these migrants with a safe place to begin their healing and learn trauma-healing practices that they can use with their own families and communities. Semillas (referencing the “seeds” to which Jesus compares the Kingdom of God) uses the therapy techniques of partnering psychiatrists and groups like the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute.
“I cannot even begin to imagine the trauma that a father like Jorge is experiencing, seeing his children murdered and attempting to bring his grandchildren to safety–only to have them ripped from his protective arms so that he could be deported,” said Katie Adams, Policy Advocate for Domestic Issues, United Church of Christ and co-chair of the Interfaith Immigration Coalition.
“Religious leaders in Mexico, the southern U.S. border, and around the nation are compassionately ministering to the spiritual and physical needs of migrants, at a time when our U.S. government is failing to recognize migrants’ humanity. The Administration and Congress should follow their examples,” she said.
The Interfaith Immigration Coalition is made up of 52 national, faith-based organizations brought together across many theological traditions with a common call to seek just policies that lift up the God-given dignity of every individual. In partnership, we work to protect the rights, dignity, and safety of all refugees and migrants.
Follow us on Twitter @interfaithimm
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