"El Espíritu del Señor está sobre mí, porque me ha ungido para proclamar la libertad a los cautivos. "

El mes pasado en Brownsville, TX, junto al pastor Carlos Navarro y la Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville, nos reunimos en un centro de bienvenida establecido para las organizaciones sin fines de lucro. Estábamos ahí para ofrecer alimentos, agua y otras necesidades básicas a los refugiados y migrantes. Minutos antes de entrar a este centro de bienvenida, ellos son liberados de los centros de detención de la Patrulla Fronteriza.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim freedom to the captives.”

Last month in Brownsville, TX, alongside Pastor Carlos Navarro and Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville, we gathered in a welcome center set up for non-profits to offer food, water and other basic needs to refugees and migrants. Minutes before they enter this welcome center, they are released from Border Patrol detention centers.

With so many needs on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and restrictions from COVID on the decline, participating in a wide range of missions opportunities is now a welcome option for church groups through Fellowship Southwest.

Despite ever-changing conditions, disappointments and even setbacks, pastors Carlos Navarro and Israel Rodríguez offer unchanging Christian love to refugees along their sections of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Navarro leads Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville near the southern tip of Texas, just across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico. Rodríguez pastors Primera Iglesia Bautista in Piedras Negras, across the river 320 miles northwest, on the Mexican side of the border.

If you’ve been wondering how to directly help immigrants seeking asylum in the United States, Pastor Carlos Navarro can tell you how to lend a hand. Actually, lend a backpack.

God always has a plan, Pastor Carlos Navarro and Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville believe. And the Nov. 15 dedication of the church’s brand-new immigrant respite shelter proves their point.

The shelter—funded almost exclusively by Fellowship Southwest—prepares IBWB to respond to refugee surges on the U.S.-Mexico border, Navarro said.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus demonstrates the power of compassion to transcend ethnic and religious differences. Now, 2,000 years later, shared love for immigrants has bound the hearts of Christian brothers from different quadrants of the Baptist denomination.

Carlos Navarro is the Southern Baptist pastor of Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville in Brownsville, Texas, just a mile or so from the Mexican border. Marv Knox is the Cooperative Baptist coordinator of Fellowship Southwest, a network of churches whose territory includes the U.S.-Mexican borderland.

Construction of an immigrant respite center at Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville will begin soon, thanks to a Christmas miracle of generosity.

IB West Brownsville ministers to refugees who pass through Matamoros, Mexico, as they seek asylum in the United States. 

The U.S. immigration policy requires asylum seekers to “wait in place” in Mexico. So, they live in a tent city in Matamoros—without running water, heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer—as they eke their way through the asylum system. They fill out applications and participate in multiple hearings with U.S. officials in northern Mexico. The process takes months. Then, only a tiny fraction eventually enter the United States, where they live with sponsors until they attend their final hearing.

On Halloween, when princesses and goblins and super heroes rang doorbells across the United States, visitors from all across the world landed on Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville’s doorstep.

Twenty-six immigrants—from Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, several Central American countries, and Cuba—received a warm welcome on a frigid South Texas day, reported Pastor Carlos Navarro.

IB West Brownsville is one of three refugee respite centers in Brownsville, just across the Rio Grande from Matamoros, Mexico. For months, the church has provided gentle care and the message of Christ to immigrants seeking asylum in the United States.