Ten members of First Mennonite Church, Bluffton, traveled to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, last month to learn more of the social, economic, and political significance of migration in border communities. 

The group included Fran Core, Melissa Friesen, Theda Good, Monica Harnish, Lynda Nyce, Jan Wiebe, Theo Andreas, and Paul, Laurel, and Ana Neufeld Weaver. 

Jan Wiebe relates some of the information learned by the visit:
• We heard about life in the border communities from service providers, businesspeople, churches, community organizers, and legal representatives. 

• We learned, or tried to learn, the complex immigration pathways and the many dead ends that most people encounter. We tried to understand why the number of deaths of those crossing the border has doubled since 1995. 

• We saw the border wall in its various forms and saw where it was splitting nature preserves and people’s own land in two. 

• We heard stories from friends now living in the region, including Tami Cupples Hernandez and her son, Archer. Tami grew up in Bluffton and moved to the Valley in 2000.

• We spent one morning listening to asylum hearings at the Immigration Court in Harlingen. In one courtroom, we listened to a 23-year old man explain why, after death threats, extortion and poverty, he had left El Salvador with his wife to try to come to the US. He explained his case via a video screen in the detention center. In another room, a woman with a baby on her lap shared her case for asylum.         

“The most memorable thing from the trip was making and serving food for people in the tent camps,” according to Theo Wiebe, a Bluffton school student.

On one day, the group volunteering with World Central Kitchen, which provides meals in the aftermath of natural disasters and other crises. There they prepared paella for 1,200 asylum-seekers who were camped out in tents in Matamoros, Mexico, while waiting for their hearing. 

The Bluffton group walked across the border with dozens of wagons, pulling the hot meals, along with sandwiches for the next day’s breakfast. 

There they served food for two hours They also volunteered for a respite center that usually houses and feeds hundreds of people daily.  

“We learned that there are not simple solutions, but there are certainly things that could be done to treat immigrants more humanely, keep families together, work towards more justice around the world, and recognize how we benefit from having immigrants among us,” said Wiebe.