Under various and ever-shifting policies curtailing access to asylum, dating back to the Trump administration and continuing through that of Biden, United States-bound refugees from all over the world have languished for weeks or months in Mexican border towns abutting the Rio Grande. Some escaped political persecution, while others fled economic deprivation, natural disasters, authoritarian regimes, or war. Many are mothers or fathers; not a few are children, some of whom have spent almost the entirety of their youth on the move, in search of safety and stability.
America’s presidents—both Republican and Democrat—have responded with xenophobic bluster or disregard, opting for deterrence instead of dignity. The U.S public generally has shown a fraction of the concern it once showed for families separated by Trump on American soil for these migrants still stuck on the other side, fending off cartel kidnappings and shakedowns at every turn. But, in the binational communities that straddle the Texas-Mexico divide, some people including activists, faith leaders, hometown heroes, and good Samaritans have responded differently. These people have responded to a humanitarian crisis by forming organizations and stepping up for migrant families. People like Liliana Carlos.
It was June when I met Carlos, who lives across the border from McAllen in Reynosa, the 700,000-person city where she serves as pastor at a Pentecostal church. She also works for the Sidewalk School, a humanitarian nonprofit that offers classesseveral days a week to migrant children in Reynosa and nearby Matamoros, sister city to Brownsville. The kids aren’t enrolled in local public schools, so the nonprofit—founded in 2019—teaches them reading, math, and art in addition to bringing food and coordinating medical services. I first encountered Carlos in the group’s Matamoros classroom, inside a hospital-turned-migrant shelter, on a near-100-degree-Fahrenheit day.
