Faith leaders and professors from the Rio Grande Valley, across the state and across the country visited Matamoros on Saturday, calling for asylum to remain protected in the U.S.
The group, consisting of academics, leaders from local and state nonprofit organizations and churches who provide aid to migrants along the southern border, gathered in front of Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville Saturday for a prayer walk to Matamoros.
The walk, which ended in a migrant encampment along the Rio Grande in Matamoros, was led by the Practice Mercy Foundation, a nonprofit migrant aid organization based in McAllen.
“[The U.S.] usually has the Captain America approach: that we go, we do, we fix, we build, we take pictures, we say bye,” said Alma Ruth, founder and executive director of Practice Mercy Foundation. “We are doing the opposite. We are inviting people to come and see, to come and listen, to come and walk in [migrants’] shoes for a couple of hours. And our understanding will be completely different because it's incarnational, it's an immersion where we are seeing through their eyes.”
On Saturday afternoon, more than a hundred migrants–most of whom were Haitian–were processed after receiving CBP One appointments. Before crossing, they waited in a line that stretched around Avenida De Las Rosas for hours with immigration paperwork in hand.
The Biden administration is considering reinstating Trump-era immigration restrictions in exchange for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan as part of a bipartisan deal with Senate Republicans.
Will McCorkle, who teaches on the intersectionality of nationalism, immigration and education at the College of Charleston and attended the walk, said the asylum system is under threat.
“It's so deeply important that we save asylum,” he said. “Because once we give it away and once they bargain it away and it's in law, and they give and take away the right for the president to give parole to individuals, it's never coming back.”
At the migrant encampment, Ruth took note of the emptiness of a space that used to hold thousands of people. Last month, Mexican authorities cleared the encampment after pressure from the federal government and the U.S. Hundreds of migrants were displaced.
Clearing the encampment was the beginning of Mexico’s cracking down on migrants moving through the country. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a visit to Eagle Pass last week that the U.S. has made Mexico recommit to enforcing their immigration laws, possibly leading to fewer migrants attempting to cross Texas’ border illegally since the start of this year.
A Mexican immigration officer posted at the encampment said the displaced migrants received asylum appointments, but TPR could not independently verify this claim.
The group chatted with the remaining migrants in the encampment for a half hour before taking photos and departing. They then went to the side of the river, which is currently in a drought, where the discarded clothes of countless migrants lay before them.
On the other side were Texas National Guard soldiers pacing above endless rows of concertina wire, moving aimlessly now that all the migrants were gone.
