MEXICO — Clergy. People of faith. Church leaders. Those with spiritually healing hands working on the southern side of the U.S.-Mexico border who offer comfort, prayer and sermons to tens of thousands of people ensnared in federal policy see little hope that the current humanitarian crisis on the America’s doorstep will improve.
“These are children,” said Rev. Louie Hotop from inside a packed urban migrant camp in Mexico, “hundreds of children. Sitting on the border. Right here. It’s impossible to ignore it once you see it.”
Hotop is one of dozens, perhaps hundreds of clergies, missionaries, good Samaritans, etc., who walk in the shadow of their spiritual leader, Jesus. They feed and clothe the poor around the clock, in bare-bones-necessity Mexican shelters and on dangerous border streets.
The poor in this situation are asylum-seekers — men, women, children and their elderly fleeing conflict, famine, flood, violence, corruption and economic disparity for what many religious people say is of "biblical proportion."
Rev. Hoptop quickly points to failed U.S policies as the root cause of the mass migration exodus making headlines daily.
“You can see immediately the suffering it creates," he said.
In early December, a federal court ruling forced the Biden administration to restart Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP. Once dead, the Trump-era policy is now resurrected. Its chilling effect on international asylum law is evident with the thousands of people existing in squalid conditions near U.S. ports of entry.
Shortly after a midweek church service at a Reynosa plaza migrant camp, Hotop said, “You can easily point to both administrations. The Trump administration and the Biden administration who have failed on immigration. And have caused great human suffering.”
This kind of public rebuke from clergy for a Republican and Democratic president on the same subject is rare. The Jesuit Society member and others believe their words against the federal government are just.
"These people are not pawns in our political game," Hotop said.
At the same camp site, Sister Patricia Forster of the Saint Cloud, Minnesota, Catholic Diocese asked a question out of frustration for what she is witnessing.
“Who do we think we are that we cannot treat each other as human beings?” she asked.
Then there’s federal public health code, Title 42. The decades-old and rarely implemented provision denies asylum-seekers due process inside a U.S. immigration court. Both Trump and Biden approved the CDC’s authority to utilize Title 42.
“We have a bipartisan issue we can grapple with,” said Hotop. “Both administrations have failed to address the real problem that is right in front of us. This huge humanitarian crisis.”
With no clear end in sight for the countless asylum-seekers begging for help from the world’s greatest power, these people of hope, pray they not lose their faith.
“It is not a future. It is not very positive. It is nothing,” said Sister Patricia.