Bernadette Eguia knows what it’s like to feel like an outsider. Originally from Mexico, she moved to the United States in 2017 to live with her now-husband. New to the country, Eguia remembers feeling alone in her new community. She felt confused and frustrated while navigating legal and migration processes. Even with a degree, she had trouble finding work. She felt discriminated against for being Mexican and for speaking Spanish. And one of the biggest challenges, she says, was a lack of welcoming communities.
“I know how it feels to not have a network, and I know how it feels to be invisible,” Eguia says. “As migrants, we need people to welcome us, to show us a little bit about the system and how to live here. It’s not easy to go to a place where there are people that don’t want us.”
As a result of those early experiences, Eguia now feels a deep empathy for migrants and a commitment to helping them thrive. That’s partly what drew her to the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), an organization that responds to the realities of immigration through humanitarian assistance, education, and advocacy work. With offices in both Nogales, Sonora, in Mexico and Nogales, Arizona, KBI is uniquely positioned to help migrants throughout their migration journey and to advocate for policy changes on both sides of the border.
At KBI, Eguia works as a social worker and the coordinator of psychosocial accompaniment, connecting migrants with local resources and emotional support. She appreciates that KBI’s philosophy of holistic accompaniment allows her to work with migrants to help them identify their needs as well as the tools and values they already possess. Often, she says, migrants have developed valuable skills such as resilience and ingenuity during their migration journeys that will help them succeed and make a positive impact in the communities where they end up.
“When we migrate, there are a lot of people who believe we need to start from zero, and they’ll say, ‘We don’t want you but we need you to do the work others won’t,’ ” Eguia says. “The thing is, we have had a huge journey. We can do those jobs, but we can also bring a lot of stuff people don’t talk about—these values, these experiences, these lessons.”
Holistic accompaniment
The work of KBI dates back to 2008, when sisters from the Ministries of the Eucharist congregation in Mexico noticed that busloads of migrants were being deported from the United States and dropped off in Nogales without any food or shelter. These migrants often chose to sleep under a local bridge. The sisters began feeding the migrants and listening to their stories. Soon after, they joined forces with the California Province of the Society of Jesus and Jesuit Refugee Services to open what would become Kino’s first shelter, Casa Nazareth.
From its earliest days, KBI has worked collaboratively on both sides of the border to provide humanitarian assistance with a component of education and advocacy. Joanna Williams first came to KBI as a college volunteer in 2010 and 2011 and returned in 2020 as the organization’s executive director. She values KBI’s holistic approach, which starts with food and housing assistance but then goes further to provide migrants with a sense of dignity and advocate for structural change.
“We don’t work in the abstract; everything we do flows from the space of encounter that we have for people,” Williams says. “Holistic accompaniment means recognizing and walking with someone in the whole of their humanity. We want to be with them beyond what is just necessary and into what brings joy, what brings hope, and what brings community.”
Many of the migrants who come to KBI have been deported or detained from the United States and are trying to figure out their next steps. The KBI team provides them with home-cooked meals, clothing, shoes, toiletries, and any needed medical care. KBI’s current shelter, which opened in 2020, can house up to 85 people, placing priority on families with small children, women traveling alone, and other people in vulnerable positions.
“Some people just come for the day—they might need a change of clothes or might come for a few services or food,” says Congregation of the Holy Spirit Sister Tracey Horan, educational coordinator for KBI. “Other people who need shelter or who have a family can stay for up to 10 days. That gives them time to rest and recover if they were traveling, a few days to start thinking about their plan and what they want to do, and a few days to transition to what’s next.”
Beyond serving people’s immediate needs, KBI has an on-site chapel with regular Mass times. The shelter also provides children’s programming Monday through Thursday in partnership with Save the Children and offers a livelihood project, which connects migrants with local jobs if they want to stay in the area. Job-skill workshops provide training in painting, sewing, and baking to help people gain independence while working from home.
On-staff social workers such as Eguia help migrants plan their next steps and connect with resources, while a staff psychologist conducts group therapy workshops about identifying emotions and trauma and one-on-one sessions with individuals experiencing profound mental stress.
Often, Williams says, the migrants who come to KBI are facing a series of impossible choices. Should they stay in Nogales and try to make a living without resources or support? Or should they try to apply for asylum in the United States, a lengthy process that could still end in deportation? Either way, they face danger, discrimination, and psychological challenges.
“People ask us for advice all the time, and we don’t give it,” Williams says. “What we do is try to give them the physical space to discern what is next for them. They can have a hot meal, get some rest, and participate in workshops to identify why they’re feeling a certain way. And we create spaces of prayer where people can step back and think, ‘Where am I hearing God’s voice in this?’ It’s about creating a little bit of safe space where people can go deeper and figure out what their next steps are amidst a lot of bad options.”
For those migrants who decide to apply for asylum, KBI offers resources to help them navigate the ever-changing policies and regulations. A collaboration with the Florence Project offers a legal orientation three times a week so people can understand what it means to apply for asylum and what the process looks like. A Mexican lawyer can provide help for people who have lost their identification along the way or who may want to seek a humanitarian visa in Mexico.
Because of KBI’s location just south of the border, the staff meets many migrants after they have traveled great distances and have already been detained or deported from the United States. Individuals will often share traumatic experiences from along their journey—including, sometimes, mistreatment at the hands of immigration officials. In those cases, Horan says KBI feels a responsibility to serve as witnesses, providing migrants with a forum to share their stories and name what happened to them.
“It’s humanizing to show that we care about what happened,” she says.
Since 2011, KBI has published periodic reports of documented border patrol failures and abuses. In 2015, they began filing formal complaints on the migrants’ behalf. KBI’s most recent report, “Abuse and Lack of Accountability at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” was published in August 2023 in partnership with the Washington Office on Latin America. The report includes stories collected over several years demonstrating a pattern of abuse from representatives of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents, as well as an overall lack of accountability.
The purpose of these documentation efforts, Horan says, is to give a voice to people who would not otherwise have one, with the hopes that their stories can prevent future wrongdoing. The 2023 report includes more than 40 recommendations to curb abuses, including disciplining agents and changing the culture that allows abusive behavior to take place.
“We’re trying to bring to light something that is pretty intentionally hidden at a unique time in someone’s journey,” Horan says. “Otherwise it might never be known.”
Helping immigrants put a name to their experiences is important to Eguia as well. She believes that by talking about what they experienced, migrants can begin to heal their own wounds while also educating others. She wants people to understand that for many migrants, migration is a natural part of life. It’s the negative circumstances migrants leave behind and the traumatic experiences they face along the way that are not normal.
“KBI understands that migration is just a part of the story, not a person’s whole life,” she says. “But if our lives are a book, we want to dignify this chapter and use it as a tool to help other people understand.”
Experiences of encounter
A core component of KBI’s educational work is planning experiences of encounter that help people see what immigration looks like beyond what they might read in headlines or hear in conversations with friends and family. KBI regularly partners with Catholic colleges, high schools, and parishes from around the country for immersion experiences, bringing groups to Nogales for three to five days of service, discussion, and prayer.
“Our focus is to humanize the situation,” Horan says. “We’re not talking about numbers or some general vague issues; we’re talking about people—the struggles they’re facing and the hopes they have for a life where they can thrive.”
While at KBI, visiting teams serve meals; help in the migrant aid shelter in Nogales, Sonora; speak with immigration-focused organizations around Tucson; hike through the deserts where many migrants travel; and spend time with migrants and asylum seekers to hear their stories and experiences.
“Our goal is to create a space of encounter where [immersion participants and migrants] can get to know each other as humans,” Horan says. “It’s incredible to see those exchanges and how the people in migration become teachers. The way people affirm each other and start to make connections between their stories is really transformational.”
Often, Horan says, visitors to KBI are not familiar with the dangerous living conditions that cause migrants to seek asylum in the United States. Migrants who seek help at KBI often share stories of being extorted, harassed, and threatened by organized crime syndicates and corrupt governments in their home countries. Those who go to authorities or resist may face violent retaliation.
“A lot of groups will comment to me that they are surprised that people really didn’t want to leave their homes and that for the most part this is their last option,” Horan says. “Many people are fleeing danger or can’t put food on the table. For most of the people we talk to, their migration is an expression of love—love for a family member or love for their kids who are living in fear and who want to be able to go outside and play and go to school.”
Horan encourages visiting groups to reflect on Catholic social teaching, which says people have the right to migrate for a better, more dignified life. She challenges visitors to take what they’ve learned and make positive changes in their own communities. One way she suggests getting started is by reaching out to organizations such as Catholic Charities to find out where the local needs are greatest.
“There are a lot of resources in our country being funneled into border control, detention, and deportation, but what we really need are more resources for welcome and a humanitarian response,” Horan says.
In many cases, Williams says, helping migrants can be as easy as talking to the people in your community, asking questions, and learning what they might need. She believes parishes, in particular, have the capability to establish accompaniment teams that serve as “agents of welcome,” helping new immigrants to feel settled and supported.
Williams also encourages Catholics to reach out to their leaders and advocate for changes in immigration policy on everything from the way migrants are treated at the border to the lengthy legal processes required for documentation to anti-corruption efforts throughout Central and South America.
Williams knows that immigration issues can seem too horrible and overwhelming to fix. Rather than feeling stuck, she hopes Catholics will continue to help in whatever ways they can.
“That overwhelming paralysis is really of the bad spirit, it’s not God’s invitation,” she says. “I invite people not to let themselves enter into that paralysis and instead to enter into a sense of openness where no one person will have the solution, but each one of us working in community can build toward a world with more dignity.”
Beyond the border
Around the country, people who have visited KBI are taking the lessons they’ve learned to make a difference in their own communities. Lindsay Horn is the associate director of social mission for Bellarmine Chapel in Ohio. She attended a KBI immersion trip in October with a group of eight others. Her most memorable moment came when her group interviewed a couple from Mexico about their migration journey. The couple’s story was hard, and people were beginning to cry when someone from the immersion team asked off-handedly how the pair met.
“The couple we were interviewing started to giggle and smile,” Horn says. “It brought so much love and light with a lot of laughs, and it really showed the humanity of people who had gone through a lot and suffered a lot but could still share this beautiful story of how they met and fell in love. It was a very holistic view of the human experience.”
Since she’s been back in Cincinnati, Horn has been thinking about how she can accompany migrants while not at the border. She and her immersion team are starting a book club to keep learning about immigration issues. They’re also planning an event at Bellarmine Chapel where they can share their experiences at KBI with others.
“We’re hoping to offer people in our community a way to hear the stories we heard and keep sharing that,” Horn says. “I have no idea what happened to the families we met and saw, but by naming these stories, we can continue to accompany them.”
Emilio Rodriguez Izquierdo is a member of Saint Xavier Parish in Phoenix, which has worked closely with KBI for the past few years. Izquierdo first got involved as part of his work with the Jesuit Coalition on Racial Equity. Through conversations with people at KBI and other migration organizations, Izquierdo was shocked to learn about the dangerous conditions that cause people to leave their home countries. Ever since his first visit to the border in 2021, he has helped to organize quarterly weekend trips back to KBI so more parishioners can hear migrant stories for themselves.
In 2023, Izquierdo started an accompaniment group at St. Francis Xavier to help welcome migrants into parish life. At the group’s first event in September, volunteers provided child care so parents could eat a meal while comparing notes on their immigration journeys. An immigration lawyer was present to speak to them and answer any questions about the asylum process. Eguia, who also attended the event, says it was a great opportunity for individuals to connect and find community across boundaries.
“We ended up celebrating a lot of our skills and learning how we can grow as a community and individuals just by talking to one another,” Eguia says. “Events like this give people the ability to talk about their stories from a place where they might still hurt, but also with a sense of community and wanting to create a better place to live.”
On the other side of the country, Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C., has established a similar accompaniment program for welcoming migrants. Parishioner Mary Gibbons has been involved since she and some fellow parishioners participated in a KBI immersion trip in 2017 and came back wanting to help however they could.
Today the ministry has about 50 volunteers, including parishioners who serve as medical and legal consultants. Together they have provided one-on-one accompaniment for 25 families from 11 countries, including Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, helping them with everything from securing apartments and jobs to figuring out where to shop or sign up for English lessons to translating emails from their children’s teachers.
“We want to make sure they have friendships in this country, people they can trust, and people who will help with their questions,” Gibbons says.
As the ministry has grown, volunteers have formed a community dubbed la familia that includes current migrants receiving assistance and those who have already gone through the program. The community gathers for holiday events and pool parties. This December, la familia members celebrated the wedding of a migrant couple from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Gibbons has found it rewarding to walk closely with migrants and learn about their lives. She first got involved in the migrant ministry in the aftermath of the 2016 election, when the vitriol against immigrants was reaching dangerously high levels. Now that she has personal relationships with migrants from around the world, she feels more confident speaking out on their behalf for political and societal change.
“For a lot of us who go to the border or read the news, our natural tendency is to be angry, but that doesn’t do anybody any good,” she says. “The way I see it, justice is downstream from empathy. If you can know people at a human level, develop a friendship, and bring others on board, it helps build momentum and passion for changing some laws and having a better system.”
This article also appears in the March 2024 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 89, No. 3, pages 26-31). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Courtesy of the Kino Border Initiative: Children of families in migration join a procession with their families during the Kino Border Institute Binational Posada.
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