The humanity, suffering and faith of migrants touched members of the Assumption University community who recently encountered them at the U.S.-Mexico border. The experience spurred ideas for responses.
Assumption campus ministry director Deacon Paul Covino and campus minister Una Murphy led three faculty members and 13 students on a service immersion “SEND” trip to El Paso, Texas, and Chaparral, New Mexico, Dec. 14-21. Students could receive one academic credit for participating.
“The trip … allows students to participate in the ministry of hospitality that the Assumptionists and the Religious of the Assumption are providing to immigrants at the border,” explains the website assumption.edu/campus-life/spiritual-life/service-immersions-trips. At least some of these religious were once part of the Assumption University community.
Migrants they serve have been processed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and brought to shelters to arrange for transfer to their sponsors in other states, Mrs. Murphy said. She said visits to the Assumptionists and the Religious of the Assumption supplemented the program which included education, service, prayer and reflection offered by The Encuentro Project.
The website encuentroproject.org says the project, “rooted in the tradition of Faith that does Justice, offers participants a faith-based, multi-faceted immersion program in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border region to experience a deeper understanding of the complex migration reality” and “motivates participants to engage in peaceful, effective action for greater justice and compassion for migrants and refugee persons as presented in Catholic Social Teaching.”
“For decades, the Catholic bishops of the United States have been consistent and steadfast in their calls for a just reform of the nation’s immigration system,” says the website usccb.org.
“The elements of reform … are grounded in Catholic social teaching generally and the Church’s teaching on migration specifically.”
Among concerns mentioned are: “A country’s rights to regulate its borders and enforce its immigration laws must be balanced with its responsibilities to uphold the sanctity of human life, respect the God-given dignity of all persons, and enact policies that further the common good.”
Assumption University participants went on the trip for different reasons and gained help for their careers and spiritual lives.Photo courtesy of Dominican Sister Thoa Tran Participants in Assumption University’s December SEND trip to the border gather at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, after Mass in Spanish and English. Sara Flayhan, a Catholic senior majoring in business, said she had much curiosity, especially because of the recent U.S. presidential election.
“I need to know the truth,” she said, adding that Assumption tries to teach students to seek for truth.
“We don’t always get to hear the humanitarian side” concerning immigration and the border wall, she said. “Assumption wants us to look at people as human. ... I am applying to law school. I may come across immigrants. ... I have to understand, if I am prosecuting ... I am still looking at a human being, I am working with another human that has a story.”
Sophia Patrizi, a Catholic freshman majoring in theology and philosophy, said she went because “I wanted to deepen my faith and I felt that the best way I could do that was to show love to others through God.” She wanted to see Jesus’ face in other people, and she ended up learning from the migrants.
“Before the trip I really struggled with accepting God’s timing,” she said. During the trip she prayed a surrender novena.
Even the non-Christian migrants “had faith that things would work out,” and the Christians believed God would take care of them, she marveled. “They just surrender themselves to his timing” and his will, and were relaxed.
“If they can do it, I can too,” she decided.
She said her mother immigrated from Brazil for a better life in the United States, but did not have to undergo a dangerous journey like these migrants did.
“I met a lot of families who had to flee for their lives,” who would have loved to stay in their own countries, Ms. Patrizi said. “I thought a lot about suffering and how they had to go through suffering,” including being raped, seeing family members brutally murdered, stepping over corpses and leaving loved ones behind.Photo courtesy of Sophia Patrizi
Playing soccer with a 9-year-old, she used Google translate to communicate, she said. When she asked how he got here, she saw the childlike life fade from him. He mumbled, “Through a river,” then didn’t want to play or talk anymore. Many people died in that river, Ms. Patrizi said.
Group members touched a fence that was not a wall, which the U.S. covered with sharp wire, she said, and were told of a migrant mother who got cut lifting the wire so her children could get under the fence.
“I hope that I can share what really happens” to migrants, Ms. Patrizi said, but added that she has tried and people don’t want to listen.
Dominican Sister Thoa Tran, a Vietnamese native in her senior year in business management at Assumption, knew about migrants from classes, news and another person. But “I wanted to see directly, through my eyes,” she said.
“When I met the migrants … I cried,” she said. “We should help them to find a better life in the U.S.,” because America is rich, blessed by God, and “we are all children of God,” with an equal right to a better life.
She said she didn’t see Vietnamese migrants in El Paso, but America welcomed them decades ago, and they made this country their home and contributed to it. With support, today’s migrants will make it their country, she said.
“I am so … blessed because I came here (legally),” she said, adding that she’d like America to help the migrants do so.
Lea Christo, professor of practice in the graduate school counseling program, and a member of Saints Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Webster, said she went on the trip to understand the experience of migrants who are students. She wanted to better teach her own students how to help them as school counselors for grades K-12.
“It was a very impactful trip … emotionally, spiritually, intellectually,” she said. The opportunity “to do the real work of the Church in real time was deeply, deeply moving … not talking about Matthew 25 but doing Matthew 25” by feeding and sheltering people.