Last time I checked, Haiti was not on the border of Texas.

I was born and raised on the border, in El Paso, TX. My parents are immigrants from Mexico, so traveling to the neighboring city of Cd. Juarez and into Mexico was very normal to me.

I’ll never forget waiting in the car for hours to cross back to El Paso. The trips back were filled with dismay, as the bridge was filled with children begging for money or selling candy or souvenirs. It was a reality that always disturbed me but taught me empathy and compassion. It was always an opportunity for my parents to teach us about our privileges, despite the fact that we were a low-income family.

On Friday June 3, Fellowship Southwest executive director Stephen Reeves received a call from Terry Burton, a leader in the Border Collaboration Network and FSW supporter, with the terrifying news that Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz had been kidnapped. Lorenzo is a dear brother to Fellowship Southwest and a member of our border pastor network. He receives monthly support from the Knox Fund for Immigrant Relief for the three shelters he operates in Nuevo Laredo and one in Monterrey where he shelters, feeds, protects, and safely transport migrants who find themselves with nowhere to go in northern Mexico. A kidnapping like this is something we have always feared, since Nuevo Laredo is known as the most dangerous city in North America because of cartel activity.

How would you feel if someone you trust harmed you as badly or worse than someone who beat you? On an international level, that’s what the U.S. immigration policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols—or MPP, or “Remain in Mexico”—is all about.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block a district court decision ordering the Department of Homeland Security to reimplement MPP. Many faith-based and humanitarian organizations that work with migrants, including Fellowship Southwest, swiftly opposed the high court’s decision.

Can you imagine spending Mother’s Day fleeing persecution and hiding in a crowded shelter?

That’s how refugee mothers on the U.S.-Mexico border will spend this Mother’s Day. Many of them have found protection from Fellowship Southwest’s immigrant relief ministry partner El Buen Samaritano Migrante, led by Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz. It operates four refugee shelters—three of them in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, and arguably the most dangerous city in North America.

The escalating flow of refugees to the U.S.-Mexico border has expanded the demands on shelters operated by El Buen Samaritano Migrante, Fellowship Southwest’s partner in northeastern Mexico.

El Buen Samaritano Migrante recently opened a third refugee shelter in Nuevo Laredo, immediately across the border from Laredo, Texas. That brings the ministry’s shelter total to four—three in Nuevo Laredo and another in Saltillo, about 185 miles south.

Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz always finds a way to serve people in dire need.

As director of the El Buen Samaritano Migrante ministry, he feeds and protects more than 100 refugees in three shelters in the Mexican states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas.

But he never considers that mammoth commitment as an excuse not to help others.

Two pastors on the U.S.-Mexico border have more reliable transportation to serve immigrants, thanks to the generosity of Fellowship Southwest churches.

Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz in Laredo drives across the border every day to serve refugees he shelters in Nuevo Laredo and Saltillo. In order to protect them from the cartels, Ortiz keeps them off the streets by shuttling them in a 15-passenger van. He often shuttles immigrants to and from Nuevo Laredo, Saltillo and Monterrey, a three-hour drive one-way, several days a week.

Can pizza prevent a kidnapping? Or spread harmony through a community? Or entice people to consider their relationship with Christ?

Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz thinks so. That’s why he’s launching Pizzas el Buen Samaritano in Nuevo Laredo, a city in northeastern Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

Mexican drug cartel enforcers went hunting “coyotes” in the desert but found a shepherd instead.

Lorenzo Ortiz, director of El Buen Samaritano Migrante Ministry, cares for refugee asylum seekers in the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico. Fellowship Southwest supports Ortiz and El Buen Samaritano, providing monthly funds for food and other necessary items, as well as operational funds for the shelters and the ministry.

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.

Lorenzo Ortiz, a Texas pastor who operates three immigrant shelters in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, stayed behind when the U.S. and Mexican governments closed the border to all “nonessential” travel at midnight Saturday, March 21.

Mutual concern about the transmission of COVID-19 led U.S. and Mexican policymakers to shut down border crossings partially, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. Officials of both governments stressed the travel restrictions would not impede lawful trade and commerce, but crossings would be limited in order to curtail transmission of the coronavirus.

Thanks to your generosity, Fellowship Southwest provided more than 500 meals per week—2,250 breakfasts, lunches and dinners—to asylum seekers in Nuevo Laredo the past month.

Pastor Lorenzo Ortiz operates three refugee shelters in the Mexican city, just across the Rio Grande from his home in Laredo. Most of the immigrants come from Central America, but some are natives of Cuba, South America and elsewhere.

The level of dire human need—and opportunity for gospel ministry—has expanded in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the border from Laredo, Texas, reported Jorge Zapata, director of Fellowship Southwest’s Immigrant Relief Ministry.

In fact, the border itself—the bridge over the Rio Grande between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo—has become a focal point of need, explained Zapata, associate coordinator of CBF Texas.

That’s because so many asylum seekers have clustered in Nuevo Laredo, they have overwhelmed the local immigrant shelters, and they’re sleeping on the bridge, he said.