Matamoros congregants host migrants in their homes

What can we do with so many migrants? This question kept lingering for months in Eleuterio Gonzalez’s mind, while he witnessed the arrival of thousands of migrants in Matamoros, Mexico –across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas and the city where he pastors Iglesia Valle de Beraca. And the answer to that question was simple, but it required a bold commitment: opening the doors of church members’ homes to welcome migrants.

“Anyhow, who want to miss the opportunity to house angels, right?” Gonzalez’s church responded —in deeds if not actual words— as they followed the ask of their pastor.

“Over 80 church members (of Valle de Beraca) have opened their homes to welcome between 300 to 350 migrants.” Gonzalez said. “Some are Haitians, others are Hondurans, others are Mexicans from Chiapas.”

According to Gonzalez, most of Valle de Beraca’s member have hosted these migrants and their families for months. “If there are two, three or four children placed with their parents in a church member’s house, we (the church) helps them with the food boxes,” González said. “We get diapers, tennis shoes, clothes and a toothbrush – everything we can get to be able to support them.”

González and Valle de Beraca have sheltered, fed, protected, and transported thousands of migrants living in tent camps, colonias, rooms and apartments scattered all around Matamoros for more than two years. In July 2020, the church evacuated hundreds of migrants when Hurricane Hanna hit the migrants who lived in the tent camp on the banks of the Rio Grande, and in November 2020, when the shelter they operated closed due to a COVID outbreak. Now, with capacity issues, Valle de Beraca’s church members opened their homes.

“Valle de Beraca should serve as an example of how American churches can welcome and serve asylum seekers,” said Elket Rodriguez, CBF field personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border. “What is amazing about this effort is that we are seeing communities with scarce resources in northern Mexico respond to God’s mandate to welcome the stranger, in spite of their limitations.”

To support the Knox Fund for Immigrant Relief, which supports the work of Pastor Gonzalez and other pastors all along the U.S.-Mexico border, click here.