All along the U.S.-Mexico border, the pastors who comprise Fellowship Southwest’s Immigrant Relief Ministry are facing a nuanced and complicated migratory flow. The number of Mexicans fleeing violence has skyrocketed, due to an ongoing cartel turf war in the southwestern states of Michoacán, Veracruz, Guerrero and Chiapas.

Fellowship Southwest's immigrant relief ministry has fed, sheltered and protected an estimated 300,000 vulnerable people and committed more than a half-million dollars to the ministry along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The immigrant ministry extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. FSW supports a network of pastors who serve refugees amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border, seeking asylum in the United States.

“Look at me,” Jesus whispered every day as I participated in a recent tour of Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief network. Many times, I saw him on the U.S.-Mexico border.

• I saw Jesus in the anguished eyes of a deported veteran, feeling betrayed.

• I saw Jesus scrambling to scavenge used clothes thrown into the street by Mexican residents.

A paradox of the refugee crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border sat smiling on the floor of a Chihuahuan desert shelter. She cooed and waved and charmed three Fellowship Southwest visitors.

Immigrant children dominate my memory.

Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry operates shelters and feeding programs along the U.S.-Mexico border. I’ve met hundreds of refugees—mostly from Central America, but also from South America, the Caribbean and even Africa—in Mexican cities from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

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.

The Statue of Liberty, Mother of Exiles, stands a little taller this week. Her fabled torch shines brighter. Once again, she beckons her welcome to “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Our presidential election signals a change at our borders. Once again, they radiate promise, potential and possibility. Once again, “the homeless, tempest-tost” may dream of opportunity in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Fellowship Southwest works among immigrants amassed along the United States’ 2,000-mile southern border. For the past several years, the refugees we have met placed greater faith in Americans than we placed in ourselves.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spiked along the U.S. Mexico border, and now it has come calling on Fellowship Southwest’s ministry to refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

FSW’s Immigrant Relief Ministry has been built upon a network of pastors who feed and protect immigrants from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Due to the nature of the ministry—serving refugees in burgeoning tent camps and crowded shelters—social distancing is almost impossible.

Pastors who comprise Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry network recently gathered in a webinar to talk about their work with refugees along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Six pastors talked with FSW Coordinator Marv Knox about how they express the love of Jesus to immigrants they have found, almost literally, on their doorsteps.

Pastors along the U.S.-Mexico border are finding strength in numbers and comfort among partners equally committed to serving refugees in Jesus’ name.

Members of Fellowship Southwest’s Immigrant Relief Ministry—strung from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean—get together through video calls to share their lives, encourage each other and to pray for God’s blessings on their ministries and the immigrants they serve.

Fellowship Southwest’s Border Pastors Peer Learning Group began convening a few weeks ago. And while the concept is new on the border, its roots run deep within the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. For years, CBF has promoted and sponsored peer learning groups—gatherings of ministers in similar situations, with similar jobs and usually at similar places in their careers—for encouragement, learning and prayer.

COVID-19 has transformed Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministries all along the U.S.-Mexico border. Among the pastors who guide the effort, some are reinventing their ministries, others have identified new service opportunities, and still others have suffered losses and obstacles that put their work at risk.

Yet they demonstrate resiliency only achieved through God’s grace and mercy. The pandemic has delivered more work, but more opportunities. It has created more challenges, but more paths for God to bless them and their ministries.

“Let the unaccompanied children come to me,” Rosalio Sosa says—in deeds if not actual words—as he responds to immigrant children being returned to the Mexican desert by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Sosa coordinates Red de Albergues Para Migrantes (Migrant Shelter Network), a ministry that serves 2,800 refugees in 14 immigrant shelters in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Most of the shelters are located in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. But his network extends to Palomas, a village about 100 miles west into the desert.

Two developments—both propelled by increasing concern over the COVID-19 pandemic—have begun to affect Fellowship Southwest’s Immigrant Relief Ministry along the breadth of the U.S.-Mexico border.

First, the border now is closed to all but selected travelers. This situation developed in stages. In mid-March, the U.S. and Mexican governments instituted a partial border closing. Initially, pastors and other relief workers feared they would not be able to cross the border to minister to refugee asylum seekers living in tent camps and shelters in northern Mexico. Officials maintained uneven enforcement, allowing pastors, chaplains and other aid workers to cross in most locations.

Compassion and concern, faith and fear, respect and resolve crackled across the country as pastors who comprise Fellowship Southwest’s ministry to asylum seekers talked on the phone March 25. They spent almost two hours telling each other about their work with refugees on the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as their concerns for those immigrants, living in the shadow of the coronavirus.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way,
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Psalm 46:1-7

This year, one aspect of the Christmas story hovers over my heart. It’s the part where an angel of the Lord tells Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and immigrate to Egypt, so Jesus would be safe from King Herod, who was hell-bent on killing him. 

Technically, this didn’t happen at the first Christmas. If you pay attention to Matthew 2 and do the math, you’ll realize Jesus was several months old, maybe even a toddler. But if you look at almost any Nativity Scene, you’ll see wise men and most likely agree the Holy Family’s immigration to Egypt is part of the overall Christmas story.

The humanitarian crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is personal—illustrated by tear-stained faces and heart-breaking stories—for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship leaders who toured Fellowship Southwest refugee-ministry sites last week.

Thirteen CBF state and regional coordinators from across the country participated in the tour, sponsored by Jorge Zapata, associate coordinator of CBF Texas and director of the FSW Immigrant Relief Ministry, and Marv Knox, coordinator of Fellowship Southwest. They completed a circuit from San Antonio, to Brownsville/Matamoros, then McAllen, Laredo/Nuevo Laredo and Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras, and back to San Antonio.