On a mid-August evening in Matamoros, Pastor Abraham Barberi can’t wipe the sweat from his forehead fast enough. As the Tamaulipan sun beats down, Barberi arranges styrofoam cups of red Kool-Aid on a fold-out table, then begins handing out ham and cheese tortas from a plastic trash bag to hundreds of hungry travelers from all over Latin America. He’s brought nearly 250 sandwiches, but with about 20 migrants left in line, Barberi has to throw up his hands and apologize. He’s fresh out.
Since November, Barberi and volunteers from his nondenominational church in Matamoros have been helping migrants stranded by one of two Trump policies currently in place: “metering,” the year-old policy of making asylum-seekers wait months in border towns to request protection properly at the bridges, or the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which forces asylum-seekers to return to Mexico to await U.S. court dates months in the future.
