"Instead of Fences on Border, Bridges"

On Saturday one of the Sisters of Saint Joseph from Concordia, Kansas, Missy, took me to see the fence that forms the border with Mexico. It stretches for miles as a formidable barrier.

In his homily yesterday on the Day of Prayer for Immigrants, Padre Arturo Banuelas spoke of the cost of building the border fence. If I understood his Spanish correctly, he noted that it costs about $16 million dollars per mile!

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, in an article in the OSV Newsweekly published on 12/30/2015, was interviewed about the significance of Pope Francis' visit to Juarez in February. Juarez and El Paso were one city in Mexico for hundreds of years until the border was drawn in the 1800's.  He says: "The river makes up most of the division between our two places...So geographically, we're one city. If you get up on a high point, the city really is, like the name says, a pass - El Paso- between the mountains...When you come to a high point and look out over the city, you can't see the river, you can't see the fence, all you see is one city stretching out for miles." 

He further states:  "...we're working to develop a sense of unity among our dioceses and across borders, and we think it can present a very helpful model at a time when people are more and more polarized because of borders- when they're more and more fearful of what's on the other side of the border. Instead of building fences higher, we're trying to build bridges that cultivate a sense of community and unity."

How contrary that sense of unity is to what the migrants face. In an article in today's paper, Ruben Garcia, the Director of the organization with which we are volunteering, spoke of what happens to them. "To get to the border, some families are paying the smugglers $7000 or more. Then, just to extract an extra $1000 or more from them, the smugglers take them to the border fence in the middle of the night and tell them to climb the fence and cross over, and that's where the Border Patrol intercepts them. "

 

Several migrants  have been injured by climbing the fence when they could have gone to a port of entry to ask for asylum. 

Please continue to pray for bridges, not walls.

Peace,

Elaine

                                                    A view from the convent where I stay. 

                                                       Another view from the convent.

 A view on the way from the grocery store.