The Promise of a Pilgrim Church

Abstract

On a visit to the Kino Border Initiative (KBI) in April 2013, I had the opportunity to speak with recently deported migrants at their aid center. One gentleman had spent 26 of his 27 years in central California, brought there as a one-year-old by his uncle. He had worked harvesting pistachios and almonds to support his wife and four citizen children without trouble, even on the occasions he could not produce a driver’s license for a routine stop. In the past two years, each such stop landed him in jail—with the third resulting in deportation to Nogales. He expressed dread at starting over in a country foreign to him. Up the road at KBI’s Casa Nazaret, I sat with deported women planning to reattempt the journey north in spite of the considerable dangers it posed. The women at the shelter were simply desperate to be reunited with their frxmilies in the United States or support their families at home in El Salvador or across Mexico. One had worked at a Motel 6 in Arizona for many years, supporting her two citizen children on her own after her husband left them; describing their initial reason for migrating to the United States from Mexico, she said, resigned, “At home you either eat or send your children to school.” The Nazareth House residents repeatedly broke into tears as they shared the pain of being separated from their children and their experiences in detention.