Despite the level of unease in El Paso, Texas, as U.S. Army tanks remain stationed on the Borderland hillsides, public land has been turned into militarized zones, and the threat of ICE roundups and neighbors disappearing becomes more commonplace, a very powerful force has not disappeared in this border city. The faith and courage of this community. Its commitment to welcome Christ in the stranger, to care for those in need, and to trust God in times of uncertainty.
That solidarity and commitment to the gospel led to an estimated nearly 1,000 people joining U.S. bishops and other religious leaders for a vigil and march in downtown El Paso in March, to stand with the most vulnerable and to defend their identity as a welcoming community. Two days later, the federal government deployed Stryker armored tanks to our border—at a time when illegal border crossings had begun dropping last year and are at an all-time low.
Militarized zones in a peaceful community
In the weeks that followed, the Department of Defense went even farther, deeming more than 110,000 acres of public land along the southern New Mexico border into west El Paso as militarized zones. But the boundaries and consequences, to both migrants and U.S. citizens inadvertently trespassing in these newly established zones, are still unclear.
The further militarization of our area known as the borderlands seems clearly intended to instill fear in a community that has long welcomed the stranger and accompanied those on the margins while promoting a fearful environment to the greater American public. With a population estimated at over 875,000, more than 80 percent of whom are Hispanic and many of whom have Mexican heritage, El Paso County is prime for presenting both images and policies that target people of color. Yet El Paso consistently ranks as one of the safest cities in America.
Assaults on constitutional rights
But something much more menacing and dangerous is happening than the propagandizing against the safety of our border home. Here in El Paso, we are clearly witnessing the dismantling of long-standing U.S. policies of due process, the rule of law, and a legal path to seek asylum and refuge guaranteed by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1951 U.N. Convention, along with the separating of families of mixed status and the “disappearing” of family members by federal agents.
“We are seeing an unprecedented attack against maintaining any due process in the justice system,” said Jennifer Babaie, Director of Advocacy and Legal Services at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, a local nonprofit that provides low-cost and pro bono legal services to immigrants and asylum seekers and advocates for human rights. “So many things we thought were foundational cornerstones in our country are being disregarded. We don’t have any faith in government institutions now. It’s very unsettling, and it’s hard not to get frustrated that people aren’t talking about this more.”
Borders have been closed barring any legal path to seek asylum. Those who are already in the country with pending legitimate asylum claims or protected legal status have no guarantee that they won’t be picked up and deported either back to their country, or worse, to heinous human rights abuse prisons in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay, where they have no access to legal help and no communication with the outside world.
An anti-family agenda
Family detention centers have reopened, ensuring that children will be imprisoned with their parents under harsh conditions with little to no oversight. The staff at Las Americas have experienced a lack of due process for their clients in various ways, including the ignoring of the habeas corpus claims they’ve filed. Such claims are filed to learn of a client’s charges and to prevent lengthy detention when no charges have been filed or indefinite imprisonment without a legal basis.
And recently, plainclothes ICE agents have been showing up outside the federal courthouse in El Paso, and elsewhere around the country, immediately arresting immigrants as they are exiting the courthouse after attending their court-ordered hearings. Courthouses, along with schools and churches, were once protected as safe and sensitive areas until the Trump administration ended that policy.
The dedicated staff at Las Americas have always been overworked in their quest to represent clients who fled untold violence, political persecution, and human rights abuses. But they trusted that the justice system would respect their work and the law would play out as intended.
That’s no longer true.
“There’s no longer any guarantee that even if you’re a citizen you won’t be harassed or picked up,” said Alan Lizarraga, of Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR), an El Paso-based nonprofit advocating for immigration reform. “They [ICE] seem to be targeting anyone who doesn’t look like their version of what America should look like.”
As a result, trained teams from BNHR have given hundreds of presentations on “Know Your Rights” at churches, schools, community centers, and other public spaces in the months since Trump took office.
Still the level of unease in the community is palpable.
The city is hurting
El Segundo barrio, one of the oldest and safest neighborhoods in El Paso, is located close to the border, blocks from two international bridges. Businesses here depend on daily traffic from Ciudad Juarez coming to shop and visit, but they are seeing less activity, according to Jesuit Father Rafael Garcia, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Segundo. He finds the streets are emptier. Business owners he knows in this part of town are hurting.
“We have heard that people coming from Juarez who cross through the port of entry with a local visa are being questioned more, and some visas are being taken away at the bridge, so fewer people are coming.”
In a city whose economy is hugely interconnected with its sister city Juarez, such fear will have serious consequences. Although Father Garcia can’t predict the future, he doesn’t see it going in a good direction, and he’s concerned about the long-term effects on people’s livelihoods in an area that is already one of the poorest in the country.
“Cruel, inhumane—that captures the moment we’re living in right now. And it’s having a profound effect on people,” said Ruben Garcia, executive director of Catholic-based Annunciation House, which has served refugees and migrants for 47 years. Even this religious nonprofit has been under attack by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who’s attempting to close its doors.
Gospel witness
But for Garcia, who has lived the gospel since he and his 20-something-year-old friends began gathering in 1976 to discern God’s call in their lives, the message hasn’t changed.
“God is not asking anything different than what God has asked us throughout the years,” he said, suggesting that a pertinent question for people of all faiths to ask themselves right now is, “How does one live their faith in the current environment? We are all asked to place ourselves in the midst of God’s special people, the poor. In Matthew 25, God makes it very, very clear that what you do to the least among you, that’s me [God] you’re doing it to.”
It is this particular scripture verse that I heard most often from fellow volunteers while serving at Annunciation House’s migrant shelters for more than four years. It was not unusual to hear someone say they saw Christ in the migrants they were accompanying.
Perhaps that’s why, in the 10 years since the face of migration changed from mostly single men arriving for seasonal work to families and children seeking protection, El Paso has responded with donations of clothing, food, supplies, money, and countless hours. And the community continued to step up even as the number of migrants arriving continued to increase.
That’s no small commitment in a city where more than 18 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and an estimated 52,000 residents are undocumented.
A culture of welcome
“The reality is that El Paso is a welcoming culture. It’s part of our history,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Catholic-based Hope Border Institute. “And hospitality is part of our identity. We are who we are as a community because of migration, not in spite of it.”
When Eric Adams, then-mayor of New York City, came to visit in January 2023 to learn how El Paso dealt with the daily arrival of migrants that his city had begun experiencing as a result of Texas Governor Abbott sending busloads to Democratic cities, he couldn’t wrap his mind around such a concept. Garcia encouraged the mayor to follow El Paso’s example and enlist local faith communities to support migrants until they got on their feet. But the mayor of one of the wealthiest cities in the world had dismissed the idea, telling Ruben, “You don’t live in my world.”
Now, although migrant shelters, known as houses of hospitality, have mostly closed in the city, other opportunities exist. Corbett said many migrants are stuck in Juarez, either in shelters or on the street. They can’t go north into the United States, and they don’t have anywhere safe to go, nor the funds to get them elsewhere. Some El Pasoans cross the bridge to offer donations and accompany migrants at these faith-based shelters.
The narrow path of following Jesus has always been risky, but never more so than it is in our country’s current political climate where people of faith fear being targeted for their ministry with migrants and the most vulnerable. And never more so for a U.S. border city like El Paso that has welcomed immigrants and asylum seekers for decades.
This is what the church must be in the world
Yet, despite the apparent dismantling of our justice system and these seemingly impossible odds, people possessing the kind of strong faith I’ve experienced in El Paso remain hopeful and committed to living the gospel. Even in what feels like dark times.
As Bishop Mark Seitz, of the El Paso diocese, told the crowd at the March vigil, “Jesus points us in a different direction, a community based on self-sacrifice, love, and bearing one another’s burdens. You have worked so hard to make this a reality in this community. This is what the church, the beloved community, must be in the world, and we must be a sign to them. This is why we take a stand for justice. And we do so nonviolently, under the sign of the cross.”
Photo by Pauline Hovey
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