“A border is a transformational location, where you see with a different lens.”
Sister Suzanne Jabro, CSJ, works tirelessly to make sure as many people as possible experience that transformation.
She is the founder and coordinator of Border Compassion, an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid to a shelter in Mexicali for immigrant families struggling to survive.
“You are there to learn,” she said. “You are there to let them know that you care and that they are not alone.”
Mexicali is across the border from Calexico, about three hours east of San Diego, and jammed with asylum-seekers. They arrive at the shelter exhausted and hungry. Many have endured months of grueling travel only to discover that crossing the border was not as easy as they had been told.
Sister Jabro invites faith communities, schools and nonprofits to participate in “Cross Over” events to visit the shelter, called Posada del Migrante, and help its residents.
In recent days, the shelter housed more than 300 people, mostly young families from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico. All said they fled their homes to escape violence, poverty and climate disasters. They planned to apply for asylum in the U.S. Some had waited for months to talk to a U.S. immigration agent.
Last October, Sister Jabro invited religious women serving at the Diocese of San Diego to assist the migrants.
Many set out to collect donations for the shelter and invited family members, parishes and congregations to join the effort. They raised $7,000 to cover food for the shelter and $8,000 worth of humanitarian items, such as clothing, supplies, blankets and backpacks, according to Sister Jabro, all to be delivered in a Cross Over event on Feb. 23.
Sister Kathleen Warren, OSF, director of Women Religious at the diocese, noted that 25 people planned to participate that day. A winter storm did not allow for travel across the mountains from San Diego to Mexicali, however.
The visit was rescheduled for March 18. This time, the San Diego group members were able to share a day with the shelter families. The orders represented included Poor Clare Sisters, Sister Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, Sisters of Mercy, Religious of the Sacred Heart, Sisters of Providence, and Franciscans. The Blessed Sacrament sisters — who live in San Diego and Imperial counties and have a school in Mexicali — helped to coordinate donations among all the entities.
The visitors served the residents a special meal and threw a fiesta for the children, complete with piñatas.
“It is a joy to have them visit,” said Elizabeth Gallardo Hernández, the shelter’s director. “There are people who have been here for seven months and are waiting for them.”
Gallardo said the shelter would not be standing if it were not for Border Compassion.
“About 80% of the donations we have come from them,” she said in a phone interview.
Members of the organization, a ministry of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet, have been going to the shelter since 2021.
“Before, we couldn’t offer (migrants) food; now, we can provide them with breakfast, lunch and dinner,” the director said. “Before they came, we didn’t even have electricity.”
The sister reflected on the impact the visits have on the visitors and residents.
“When we leave, we are tired, and we carry a lot of their story and the pain. They, on the other hand, are exhilarated, their load is lighter.”
Border Compassion seeks donations to help families at a shelter in Mexicali. Information: Email sjabro@csjla.org or visit border-compassion.org. Checks may be sent to 43376 Cook Street, Unit 10, Palm Desert 92211.
Full story in the Southern Cross.
Fake asylum seekers trying to game immigration laws.
It’s helpful to read what our US bishops and the Catechism have said about this, including:
The Catholic Catechism instructs the faithful that good government has two duties, both of which must be carried out and neither of which can be ignored.
The first duty is to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person. Persons have the right to immigrate and thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible, especially financially blessed nations: “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.” Catholic Catechism, 2241.
The second duty is to secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good. Sovereign nations have the right to enforce their laws and all persons must respect the legitimate exercise of this right: “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” Catholic Catechism, 2241.
Both are duties. Five Honduran immigrants were murdered and their family is grieving because Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres entered this country illegally at least four times (after being arrested and deported). We have no obligation to let career criminals into our nation. In fact, we have a duty to stop that. Ask the Honduran immigrants who lost their loved ones because of our open border.
I agree with you except the notion that we have an “open border’, a term invented by far right conservatives who don’t believe a whit about what you (correctly) quoted from the catechism, and who are sometimes duped into believing we have open borders by Fox News, and others who are simple xenophobes and often racists. Please find a less loaded term to describe the ongoing crisis at the border. Trump, after all, claims he largely finished building the wall. How did that work out? (see for example https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-false-claims-at-border-almost-finished-building-the-wall-2021-7)
If it’s not an open border, how did this mass murderer get across it at least four times?
By breaking the law. Hence, there is not an open border. Open borders are what we in the USA have between states.
If the federal government under Democrat rule is unwilling or unable to prevent mass-scale border crossings, then the border is open regardless of what the law states.
He got sent back that many times. If we had open borders he would never have been sent back.
If it weren’t an open border he couldn’t have crossed illegally into America. you don’t get to define what open border means. It means people are largely able to cross from Mexico into the United States without authorization and without being detected and without being processed.
So why are these poor people in the story waiting to get in?
And if we didn’t have open borders, he wouldn’t have been able to get in.
YFC – It’s never wise to call good people xenophobes and “almost racists” because they might favor vetting immigrants who want to come to this country. As an immigrant myself, it took me four years from the initial application, medical tests, background checks, etc., to the much-anticipated swearing-in at the American Embassy in my city. Was the US government at that time putting me through the hoops because of prejudice or xenophobia against me or my country of origin? Of course not. It was their right as a sovereign nation to determine who gained entry. That same right still holds true today. Name-calling in any form is uncharitable, and I am surprised at you.
Axiom, “good people” sounds an awful lot like the phrase Donald Tump used to defend white nationalists in Charlotsville, calling them “very fine people”. I don’t know if that was your intention, but you might want to be careful who you defend.
What I wrote was not what you suggest. I said that some were duped into using the term (which would largely include the people who favor vetting immigrants), and those *others* who are xenophobes and often (not “almost”) racists. I call them that because that is what they are, regardless of whether they hide behind the benign phrase “favor vetting”. I favor vetting. I don’t use the term “open borders” because it is inaccurate and and lacks nuance, and is being used to stir up unsympathetic, unchristian, unAmerican sentiments.
Also, almost all of the people who conduct mass shootings in the US were born in the US, so if we make the implication that immigrants are the cause of mass shootings because one happened to be one, we tar an entire population that are not mass shooters. And why we sold him his assault rifle is beyond me, clearly already having a history of deportations and violence.
YFC – If you want nuance, here you go: “Good” People are moral, charitable, kind, humble, upright, principled, faithful and faith-filled. Your reference to Trump and white nationalists is just absurd.
I seem to recall fake Catholic Biden, right after his “election” announcing that everybody is welcome to come in. If that’s not Open Border, what do you call that policy? That’s the reason many of those illegal aliens wear t-shirts that say, “Biden, let us enter!” because that Biden person promised.
Gaming laws: ok. You can stop channeling Tucker Carlson. His reputation has been destroyed beyond repair. Catholics try their best to follow Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rather than the arrogant anathema Tucker Carlson.
To the contrary, Tucker Carlson is cooler than ever. Every attempt to discredit him has elevated his stature.
Wilma, what has Tucker Carlson done that you resort to name calling and anathematize him?
As the liberal Naomi Wolf recently noted, “When my liberal friends and loved ones would roll their eyes and spit out ‘Tucker Carlson,’ as if that name itself was epithet enough, I would often pester: ‘What? Why? What did he actually say?’ I never got a good answer.”
Can you provide examples?
And, though not a Catholic, at least not yet, it seems Mr. Carlson is trying his best to follow our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Ardent leftists, two of whom are posting in this thread, parrot what the women on The View and the talking heads on MSNBC tell them to think and say. They go no deeper than “Orange Man Bad” and “Tucker Carlson is a racist.”
“That’s not the way white men fight”. Really? What exactly was that comment if not racist?
OK, strike one. Any more examples? You ever say anything you regretted?
Will you excuse Mr. Biden’s dozens of racist remarks?
A few examples: in August 2020, Biden told a gathering of black and Hispanic journalists that “unlike the African American community, with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things.”
On Charlamagne Tha God’s popular morning radio show in May 2020, Biden infamously asserted to the largely black audience that if they were unsure of whether to vote for him or Trump, then “you ain’t black!”
In 2010, he warmly eulogized Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, saying he was “one of my mentors” and that “the Senate is a lesser place for his going.”
In 2006, he said, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
Way back in 1977, Biden said that forced busing to desegregate schools would cause his children to “grow up in a racial jungle.”
One remark and Carlson is gone. A history of racist remarks makes one president. You okay with that?
The left can do anything it wants, and the left are the most racist people out there. They are keeping the southern border porous precisely to bring in races of people they despise with the intent that America will collapse, and then the Democrat elites can take charge of everything and install a dictatorship.
Tucket hurt Wilma’s feelings.
Wilma, if you climb into your neighbor’s house through the back window without your neighbor’s permission, that is a sin against the Seventh Commandment.
Thank you for running this story.
This should not be controversial.