The border

I started the day taking a family from Brazil to the airport. The language barrier was a huge chasm between us- so I turned on some music, instead.

The second largest group of people who seek asylum on the southern border now are Brazilians. And it seems that they are booked in and out of detention much faster than anyone else. I'm not really sure why that is...my guess is that Border and Customs don't really have the resources to deal with Portuguese speakers, but I could be wrong. At least 60% of the people coming through the last few days have been Brazilian.


When I got back, I helped out with lunch. Meals are usually provided by church groups, and the most lovely group was there today.
 
We talked about El Paso and their work with Annunciation House. The church opened up their doors to migrants when there was a large influx about a year ago, before CDR opened. They asked me why I came, and what my impressions were. One woman, Leticia, said that she believed that it didn't really matter why people were coming- she just saw the need and wanted to help.

I later helped with intake- a nerve wracking undertaking with all of the Portuguese speakers! But we got through it. It was nice to genuinely say "bienvenidos" or "bem-vinda" to people who probably hadn't heard it before now. Seeing families with small children certainly makes you have hope for the American dream.

After work, my friend Alison and I went on a little trip to the Mission trail, a road with three missions along it. The first one is the oldest- Old Ysleta Mission was built in 1682 by the Tigua people, who had fled from New Mexico with the Spanish after not fighting with Pueblo people in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The mission is the oldest operating parish in Texas. Interestingly, it used to be on the south side of the Rio Grande, and as the flow of the Rio Grande is the official border of the US and Mexico, it used to be in Mexico. In 1829, a major flood changed the course of the Rio Grande, and now it is in the US.

We moved on to Saint Elizario, a rural town that feels not at all like the United States. In fact, upon arriving, our phones sent us messages welcoming us to Mexico. There were teenagers playing guitar in the otherwise quiet plaza dotted with green iron benches. Another group of teens revved their motorcycles around the square. Stray dogs ran up to our car.


We parked next to the mission and let ourselves in. The heavy wooden doors and white stucco adobe seemed like out of a storybook- and so did the inside, with colorful ceiling tiles and solid wood pews and late afternoon light streaming in.


We walked around the town a bit, read a bunch of facts, and saw this beautiful half face horse. 
Realizing we were close to the border, we embarked to see it. We navigated through some winding small town roads to the border, and it was easy to see. The fence is huge.
 
We've heard stories of people trying to pass over the fence using ladders from coyotes and falling terribly. I can see why- the fall would be pretty nasty, but the fence is short enough to risk it if you were really desperate.

The idea of the border wall has become so normalized-if you look at maps of the border, much of it has some kind of fence These "big beautiful walls" don't come cheap, and it's hard to imagine the cost/benefit analysis ends up in their favor. Does the wall actually stop people, or is necessity the mother of invention? Do people just find other ways to cross thee frontera? It seems that they do.

L&Js, Organ Mountains, White Sands, and a sad anniversary

I got the day off today, but I knew it would be difficult anyway, being the one year anniversary of my dad's death.

Even the last few days, the stark difference between this year and last, while we sat at my father's bedside, was hard to ignore.

So I knew I needed to do something today that would be enjoyable but also would allow me a little time to honor Dad.

Two other ladies had the day off with me, so we made a plan to go to a famous El Paso restaurant and then go to two hiking places: Organ Mountains Desert Peak and White Sands National PARK (it just got upgraded!).

First stop: food. The place has been in the family for generations and is an institution. 
I ordered queso fundido for the table- something I hadn't had since I was a teenager when our family visited Tulúm, and green chili chicken enchiladas. It was delicious and a ton of food for a good price. L and J's Cafe lived up to the hype.

From there we headed to Dripping Springs in the Organ Mountains. Organ Mountains was named back in the 1600s by early Spanish settlers due to the jagged peaks' resemblance to a pipe organ.

Me, Elissa, and Alison at Organ Mountains Desert Peak

We hiked up into Dripping Springs, a botanically diverse spot with a natural spring that has been home to a mining area, a resort, and a tuberculosis sanitarium at different points in its history. It feels surprisingly lush- with trees, bushes, and even ivy and ferns. It also feels a bit lonely- it's easy to imagine how remote this must have felt, before Las Cruces was a city, before cars.



From the Organ Mountains, we headed through military testing land up to White Sands. Part missile testing area, part recreational, the white sand dunes expand over 250 square miles. The dunes are in a basin that is on top of a layer of clay, so only a foot or two underneath the dune is a water table- pretty shocking in the huge, seeming desolate desert. The sand is gypsum, not silica, and thus it reflects lights and heat and stays cool to the touch even in hot weather. Today, it was fairly cool and sprinkling, so it was harder to notice. But the fine damp gypsum felt more like the special kind of kinetic sand than beach sand. And it is a stunning white.



We took sleds to sled down the dunes. How rare it is for us adults to really play- and that's absolutely what it was-truly playing.

I had brought a rose to place at the park in memory of my dad, and after some sledding walked out on my own to find a quiet spot. I sat there, and thought of him, and how much he would have liked this, and how I miss him, but how I also accept that he has moved on and that my life will always be different. 

We took a sunset hike with a volunteer guide. There wasn't really a sunset, but the guide explained some things that I think are pertinent to that idea of acceptance and adaptation. 

The dune moves- in some places up to 30 feet a year. But there are a lot of plants that can still thrive in these dunes. One is a type of sumac- this plant will grow roots that hold on tightly to the sand, forming almost a rock underneath the plant. If the dune blows away, it still has something to hold on to. Another plant, the yucca, grows very tall so that if a dune blows over it, the top will still be on the surface. Some yucca plants are over 20 feet tall underneath the dune, even though you can only see a foot or two of plant on the surface. 

Life can change fast- life can change in an instant. And species that can adapt to those changes are the most likely to survive even the most difficult of conditions. 

Some excursions

After my shift yesterday, I had more energy than the few days prior and decided to trek out to Hueco Tanks. Hueco Tanks is about a half hour outside of El Paso, a big outcropping of volcanic rock that was once covered by limestone but has been exposed through a period of weathering over the last 34-38 million years. Hueco means hollow in Spanish, and the site is marked by the number of holes that allow water to collect during rains and remain long into the dry season.


 

Because Hueco Tanks acts as a sort of oasis, it is sacred to a number of Native American tribes and has a number of petroglyphs, but to be honest, I didn't see any.

As I walked out to my car from the ranger station, along saunters this guy:


He didn't have a care in the world, and when I was a bit too far away to take a picture, he took a squat and peed in the middle of the road!

I arrived at 4 and the sun set at 5:30, so I knew I was losing light and needed to be quick. But it was difficult to give it justice. Every ledge that I scrambled over made me want to scramble over another. There was a diversity of plant life nestled in the rock. People think that the desert is desolate, but this one actually has a lot of life, if you know how to look. A canyon towhee and Pyrrhuloxia rustled in the grasses below me as I balanced across a narrow passageway of rock. A Lincoln's sparrow scolded me from a bush as I made my way up a crevice.





As the sun was setting, I sat at the Hueco Prieta and watched a flock of juncos scratch the grass litter, seemingly oblivious to me. Deciding it was probably time to get to my car before dark and more importantly, before the gate closed, I made my way through a triangular crevice back to the road. It was so cozy, the temperature so perfect, that I almost could have slept there. You know, if it hadn't been for this sign.


The next day, I did some chores around CDR before being sent out to drop a family off at the bus stop and then drop food off at one of Annunciation House's other buildings, Oscar Romero. The building is named after an Archbishop of El Salvador who was killed after speaking out against social injustices, torture, and corruption in that country during civil unrest in the late 70's. He was more recently officially martyred and canonized by the Catholic Church.

This building houses longer term guests, and is right next to the largest Border and Customs Patrol detention center in El Paso. I learned that this location holds upwards of 800 detainees, and was the location that recently had some bad press when some of the people being held there went on a hunger strike and were force fed. It seemed that the guards even eyed me with suspicion as I drove away.

I finished off the day with a hike with a new friend of mine, Alison. It was a challenging, mostly uphill climb on scree, and we cut it close at the end- having to race to make it to the gate before it closed at 5pm sharp. But we did make it to a location of a spring, mostly dried up now, but allowing for more diverse plant life. There were two cotton wood trees that rustled in the wind, a beautiful sound against the silence of the mountain and the view of the valley.

Annunciation House

I arrived on Sunday morning at the unmarked warehouse where I was sent by Annunciation House. After the shooting in El Paso in 2019 that explicitly targeted Latinos, Annunciation House has been very discreet about its location. A long term volunteer, Pietro, came to lead me in through the large and labyrinthine warehouse that has been expertly decorated with murals from artists throughout the city.

Annunciation House is a privately funded Catholic mission that serves refugees from Latin America who cross the border at El Paso. The place that I am working is called Casa del Refugiado (CDR), which specifically serves families for short term stays, a mere stopover on their journey to somewhere else in the country.

All of the refugees who come to CDR first went through border detention and are dropped off by ICE. I have not yet delved into too much about the experience in detention with any of the guests at CDR, but I hope to learn more at some point.

Generally, people apply for asylum in Juarez, across the border, and wait until their turn is called. Especially since the Migration Protection Protocols, or the "Remain in Mexico policy", this is ICE's preferred method for those who are seeking asylum. Sometimes, people try to expedite the process by crossing the Rio Grande on foot. These people not only are caught but want to be caught, because this forces ICE to place them in detention and to begin the bureaucratic asylum process.


People at Annunciation House state that the people who come through their doors are sometimes fleeing extreme violence and persecution. I am sure that this is sometimes true, but I think that the following quote by a respected local reporter is more true. "It's pretty clear that most of (people crossing the border) don't meet the traditional definition of asylum seekers," states Robert Moore of El Paso Matters.  "Most of them at the root are trying to make lives better for their families. The challenge in Central America in particular becomes that you have all these issues of violence, and government impunity, and corruption, and gangs, and climate change, that are all coming together that you can't just separate from poverty."

So that being said, the people who come through Annunciation House have gone through a grueling and exhausting journey in efforts to improve their family's life. At CDR, they are dropped off by ICE in the loading deck, and then are taken in to the warehouse where volunteers intake them, learning where they are from, where they are going, and if they have any special needs. To be released on asylum, individuals need a sponsor- generally a family member- who can vouch for them and take them in. I have seen families heading to California, Nebraska, Virginia, and Illinois to join family members who came before.

After intake, families receive hygiene items (soap, linens, deodorant, etc) and then go to the "ropería", a sort of thrift store with donated items. They can take one change of clothes- no exceptions. From there, they can go take a shower. There are no showers in border detention centers, so this is often the thing people are most excited about. They then can get settled in the dormitory where they can sleep and kids can play. All the meals are provided for by local church groups- some of it is good and some of it... not so much. But after all the work I'm usually pretty hungry and not one to complain.

Families stay between a day and a week. Their sponsors arrange for their transportation, and Annunciation House helps them get to bus stations or the airport in order to make the final leg of their journey. The other day, I took a young family to their airport. They had never flown before and were nervous but excited. It was the first real day of freedom, in a way.

As you can probably tell, Annunciation House is a well-oiled machine with processes that work to mitigate the unpredictability of migrants' comings and goings. This week, there have not been many migrants and there are a lot of volunteers, but it still seems like there is still a lot of work to be done. I have organized donations, washed laundry, helped with meals, and given old rotten stairs a fresh coat of paint. I always leave feeling a bit wiped out, but grateful to be helping -in some small way -make the world a little less difficult, a little more welcoming, for people in need.

From Galesville to El Paso

I started before dawn the first day, a time of day that I do not often see anymore. Everyone else was headed to work, certainly, but my hatchback was pointed much farther, hoping to get to Wichita by sundown. 

It seemed like a perfect day to drive: overcast with dry roads for winter. But hitting the Iowa-Missouri line, it began to rain, freezing rain, hard and fast. As a travelled south, it warmed up slightly but rained harder. I paid close attention, and kept my hands at 10 and 2. 

Perhaps that is why, when the rain stopped just south of Topeka, the land gave me a shock. Although I was white-knuckling it, the landscape before seemed much the same as the rest of the midwest- mostly flat cropland with the occasional riverbed, interspersed with deciduous trees. Thus the shock when it seemed like I passed over a hill onto another planet. Rolling, reddish brown hills with only the occasional stunted tree, windmill, or oil rig. In fact, for a minute it frightened me--knowing how far away I was from home, and how alien it seemed. The Wizard of Oz "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," came to mind, although, of course, I was in Kansas. 

I stopped in a town called Pratt, a little over an hour past Wichita. By then, it had grown dark, and I walked weary into the Holiday Inn, checking myself in and then heading out to a pub for dinner. The waitress asked me what I wanted to drink. "Gin and tonic," I said. She looked at me bewildered and asked what was in it. I looked back at her, equally bewildered. 

The next morning I set out a bit later. The sun was up and the sky was huge. I traveled through a number of dusty towns that looked all but abandoned. A field stone school with the roof collapsed, motels boarded up, the windows of restaurants shattered. I thought this would just be in Kansas, but this theme continued into Oklahoma, Texas, and especially New Mexico. 

I did see some curious things though. A long fence line of wind art made out of street signs in Kansas. A town called Hooker- complete with places called things like "Hooker Motel". A 50's look silver Route 66 sign about the size of me. A good amount of birds for winter- including northern harriers, red-tailed hawks, a rough-legged hawk, meadowlarks, Chihuahuan ravens, and kestrels. 

At one point in Oklahoma, I noticed an area coming up in the vast ranch land that looked mottled black and industrialized. At first I thought it was a dump because of the gulls diving in and amongst it, but as I got closer I realized it was cattle. Cattle as far as the eye could see- much closer together than the cattle I'd see out on the ranches up until then. I realized that this was a feedlot, something I'd heard of but not seen. I felt a little dumb for thinking it was a dump. 

As I got into New Mexico, I started noticing off in the distance shadowy landforms- I think mesas. They got closer, and then closer together. It was rugged beauty, and the towns were even farther apart than they had been in Kansas or Oklahoma. Inexplicably, there would be speed limit reductions along long stretches of highway. Then, after about a mile, you'd speed back up. I never figured out quite what the rhyme or reason behind the changes was. 

Towards dark, I passed through the Sierra Blanca and the Mescalero reservation. I learned that Sierra Blanco is a volcanic mountain range that began activity about 38 millions years ago and remained active for 12 million years. Some parts of the mountains looked like someone had put a thumb print impression in the side. They lit up with a soft alpenglow as the sun set. 

Another hour or so down the road I began to see the lights of El Paso. The landscape had gotten incredibly flat, and it was hard to get a sense for the size of the city. But as I turned a corner, I noticed something even better than the lights of my final destination: the moon. Nearly full, and recently risen in the east. It seemed larger here than I had seen it before, without buildings or trees or hills in the way. Just creamy and glowing, I could see the deep valleys carved into the moon like the valleys I had just driven through.