Juarez City.- During this week, up to 800 people have come daily to the migrant care offices in the Ciudad Juárez Cathedral in search of food, legal advice, clothing and milk for their babies, reported its coordinator, Cristina Coronado.
“We have had an unusual flow, now 700, 800 people arrive per day; many of those who were already gone to other borders and many are already renting far from the Center, but many new ones have arrived, when I asked them they tell me that they just arrived these days,” said the coordinator in Juárez of the Ministry for Migrants of the Missionary Society of San Columbano, responsible for the Catholic dining room.
The space opened its doors in October of the year when the maximum peak on extraordinary days was 300 people, while in the first days of January they received up to 400 people a day, from Monday to Friday, in February the figure reached 500 or 600 and This week it has increased again due to the fact that more and more families with small children are arriving in the city.
In the offices of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe, migrants are supported by personnel from the international organization HIAS and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in the use of the CBP One application, through which they can obtain an appointment to enter to the United States in search of a humanitarian exception.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is coming this week to support them with the health issue and the transfer to the Leona Vicario Integrative Center for Migrants, after the request made by the Human Mobility Pastoral to the delegate Juan Carlos Loera, to receive migrants, because before it only received those who were sent to it from other shelters.
All migrants are offered a plate of food, so they enter to eat in rounds of one hundred people, starting at 11:00 in the morning, after performing a prayer led by one of the priests or nuns. supporters.
“Today it is barely 12:30 in the afternoon and there have already been five rounds attended, and there are already a hundred more people waiting for their admission. In some cases the mother comes with the children, because the man is already working”, commented the religious activist.
He explained that the main food support is provided by the Missionary Society of San Columbano, but there are also religious communities that support them, such as the Servants of the Poor with Father Luis Escudero, the Sorrowful Sisters of Ciudad del Nino and Asilo Senecú. and another community of nuns who come on Friday.
The activist asked for the support of the community to gather disposable items, bottled water, fruit, beans -raw or cooked- and milk, to feed the children and adults who come to the Cathedral looking for a plate of food.
Today, before serving food to each group, Coronado asked each group of migrants to be patient to enter the United States, he explained that there is a xenophobic discourse on the part of some authorities that is already influencing the community, for some people who have done wrong, so they must follow the rules.
“We are very concerned as a church and as people who care for you, take care,” he told them, also explaining that staying close to an international bridge will not benefit them at all, so they should take advantage of the spaces that open up in the shelters. from the city.
He also alerted them that their only way to enter the United States is through the CBP One page and the rest is lies or fraud, so he invited them to seek free advice from HIAS personnel to clarify their doubts and with the IRC to start the process from the creation of the mail.
Coronado lamented that “there is no coordination, there is no head, there is a total abandonment of the two main countries, which are the United States and Mexico, which took the agreements (to extend Title 42) and they should have the upper hand and know that They are people, they are people, they are not numbers, but right now everyone is in their political game and these people are abandoned,” lamented Coronado.
