By Elket Rodríguez 

Pastors who form the backbone Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry are adapting to meet the needs of asylum seekers as immigration policy rapidly changes. 

The U.S. government is cooperating with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to implement Phase One of a program to roll back the Migrant Protection Protocols—better known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy—designed to begin processing migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Two dozen asylum seekers who have been waiting more than a year in Tijuana, Mexico, crossed into the United States through the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego Feb. 19. 

The restart of asylum processing triggered a surge on the border, reported Juvenal González, senior pastor of Iglesia Bautista de la Calle—Baptist Church of the Street—in Tijuana who oversees three refugee shelters.

“Migrants crowded the border and set their tents,” González said. “Very few MPP asylum seekers have crossed. But (others) are sleeping near the border, attentive to what happens while more migrants continue to arrive."

Meanwhile, the Phase One initiative also is being implemented at the El Paso port of entry, 733 miles east of San Ysidro. 

Pastor Rosalío Sosa, who operates Red de Albergues para Migrantes—the Migrant Shelter Network—is registering asylum seekers who live in the shelters he operates in the online registration system designed by the United Nations to identify the 25,000 asylum seekers with active MPP cases.

“We help to register with UNHCR’s system those asylum seekers living in our shelters,” Sosa said. His network includes 14 shelters in the state of Chihuahua, most of them in Ciudad Juarez, but also as far away as Palomas, about 100 miles west into the desert. "We also updated the list of asylum seekers subject to MPP that we have and sent it to the UNHCR."

Near the Gulf of Mexico, the Gateway International Bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas, also is experiencing the Phase One process. But many asylum seekers experience technical issues.

“People are having problems with the registration process, and it is very slow,” said Pastor Eleuterio González who, with his church, Iglesia Valle de Beraca, have operated a feeding ministry in the migrant camps along the banks of the Rio Grande River in Matamoros and in the slums of the city, where many migrants have relocated. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, Pastor Carlos Navarro of Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville and volunteers from his church have started ministering to asylum seekers allowed to cross into the United States. 

Navarro has been providing food and backpacks stuffed with clothing, snacks and other supplies to asylum seekers the government has delivered to the local bus station as they await transportation to join their sponsors across the nation.

Fellowship Southwest has built an immigration respite center on the church’s campus, about two miles from the border. Navarro is collaborating with local officials to get volunteers vaccinated and to receive a certificate of occupancy for the new building. Once those steps are in place, the church will receive asylum seekers and provide a range of ministries—hot meals, showers, fresh clothes, traveling provisions and Christian love—before taking them to the bus station for travel to their sponsors.

For now, asylum seekers are only allowed to cross into the United States through these three ports of entry. But other pastors in Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry continue to serve migrants in Northern Mexico, where they await next steps on their path to asylum. 

Fellowship Southwest provides ongoing financial support to pastors in its immigrant relief ministry—including Eleuterio González, Juvenal González, Carlos Navarro and Rosalío Sosa. You can support their ministries by donating to the Fellowship Southwest Immigrant Relief Ministry. To contribute, click here.

Elket Rodríguez is an immigrant and refugee advocacy and missions’ specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest.