When drug traffickers shot Wayner Berduo seven times last year, they didn’t stop there. The men nearly beat him to death with their pistol grips, police reports say. One bullet pierced Berduo’s eye socket, so after the attack, surgeons removed his left eye and stitched back together his face and his right arm, which now Read more
I lived through 14 years of terrorism in Peru, and witnessed the flying bullets and massacred youth lying in pools of blood on the sidewalks in my barrios in Venezuela. However, living here in Brownsville, it fails comprehension that the most powerful country in the world which promotes itself as the watchdog for human rights Read more
Family pressures are familiar to us all, they are so much more acute here on the border. Jason is 17 years old, a Hispanic, born on the US side of the river, a spina bifida kid who lives in a wheel chair. His mum left him at birth. Magda his grandmother, adopted him as her Read more
Recently some 2000 members of the National Guard of the United States have been sent to the Southern Border with Mexico. The National Guard exists for the protection of the nation. They assist in times of natural disasters or respond to an armed threat from a foreign military force. None of that is happening at Read more
This Thursday the 11th of August I said the prayer to begin the monthly “walk of a mile” by social action groups, mainly women, calling attention to stopping deportations; the separation of families; the freeing those detained in migrant detention centers; and an end to deaths on the border. We walked to the Federal Courthouse Read more
“Who says men don’t cry?” is New Zealand Marist priest, Tony O’Connor’s initial reflection of ministering on the border of Mexico and the United States. Part of Fr O’Connor’s ministry, working in the Brownsville Texas parish, is to visit two detention centres, one for captured minor migrants and the other for captured adult migrants. Given their personal circumstance and Read more
On Christmas Eve, 1991, I was preparing to celebrate Mass. I was at Casa Romero, a hospitality center for refugees set up by the Diocese of Brownsville in response to a massive number of Central Americans fleeing violence by heading north to the USA. Because I had some time before we were supposed to start Read more