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 hangs limply by his side.

For days, Berduo has waited hours at a time in the long line of day-trippers, shoppers, and commuters headed for Brownsville, Texas.

When I met him, he was clutching a plastic bag of medications he hoped to bring with him—if the agents at the front of the line ever allowed him to legally enter the U.S. to apply for asylum protection.

So far, they have not.

Like hundreds of others stuck at the border in recent weeks, Berduo stands in a kind of purgatory spanning the Rio Grande.

Agents have repeatedly turned him around, telling him to "wait in Mexico" and check back every few hours.

I watched as they turned him back for the 20th time in four days, the agents explaining that they didn't have enough room in the port of entry to process Berduo.

The United States government has separated more than 2,300 children from their parents at the border since May, a tactic that top officials in the Trump administration have described as a form of deterrence.

Delaying asylum seekers on the bridge appears to be part of this larger effort.

Fleeing dangerous conditions to seek refuge in America is getting more difficult for people like Wayner.

Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned more than a decade of jurisprudence to rule that asylum claims based on gang violence or domestic abuse generally will not qualify.

The Trump administration encourages migrants to seek asylum at bridges—"You are not breaking the law by seeking asylum at a port of entry," Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted Sunday—even as it has made it more difficult for them to do so. Continue reading

Source: The Atlantic 19 June 2018

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 and democracy, has a government ripping toddlers from their Central American parents as they cross the borders.

These people cross the border seeking asylum from gang and domestic violence, poverty and certain death.

The government announced in April 2018 that they would do this as deterrence to illegal migration from the troubled countries of Guatemala, Honduras and Salvador.

I remember in the last years of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

He had a project to separate children from their parents at a tender age and have the state assume responsibility.

Thanks be to God, that never happened.

But for the USA to do this, makes a great number of Americans angry.

A woman from Wyoming, a stranger to me wrote yesterday saying that her grandparents came for Ireland and Germany and would be turning their graves.

She asked me to tell the children how ashamed she feels and that not all Americans are evil.

But the government and followers have a different rhetoric of explanation and justification.

Marist mission in Brownsville

I came to Brownsville in 2013, to work in the parish.

It's a very mixed parish.

Some are citizens, others have visas, others have expired visas; so are illegal, and still others plain illegals who have crossed the river.

Many are here seeking asylum.

I move around visiting, assisting, 'accompanying the unaccompanied' central American youth in refuge centers.

Their goal, was to have their cases processed so that they could move north to be with families who would care for them and accompanying them in their process of getting asylum or visas.

These youth are the "cream of the cream," brave, faith filled and with a deep desire to commit themselves to life and to God in this new country, and also be finally able to help their families.

Since the new government has taken power, these people all fear for their families, the illegal live more in the shadows from the state troopers, the border patrol and ICE.

On the other hand the people of the Rio Grand Valley and especially Brownsville are generally gentle caring family people who welcome the stranger and the alien and in no way reflect the punitive attitude recently on display for the world to see.

So here I am, a Marist among them, connected with the local network, doing my best to help and to listen and to walk with these people.

I'm not able to solve the problem, just offer 'my grain of sand in this desert land'.

For example, the parish has between 100-150 young people coming from 3 refugee centres to the parish Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

We pray with them and feed them (treats they don't get in the refugee center).

When the toddlers separated from their mothers pray, their prayer is very revealing.

"God I want to be back with my mum and dad."

"God thank you for this roof over my head and the people who care for me and the food I eat each day."

You see it's the Rio Grande, local people, youths, mums and dads with their own kids, even grandparents all care for these children.

Media interest piqued

Here in Brownsville, on an ongoing basis, we live and breathe refugees, illegals, youth, vibrancy.

At the moment the media is everywhere and I have been interviewed by the Washington Post, was on TV with MSNBC.

The hope is that with media attention focusing on the current abhorrent agony, that in some way we can help find a solution and children in America, in this way, will never again be separated from their parents.

• Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand Marist priest working in the Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, on the border the USA with Mexico. He is a third generation kiwi; his first ancestor families traveled from Ireland and 1867 arrived in New Zealand. Like most poor migrants they came looking for a better life.

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 own and continues to care for him.

She married Herminio seven years ago an undocumented Mexican.

One can't imagine the feelings of a Spina bifida kid abandoned by his own mother.

His grandmother disciplined Jason for the questionable use of his cell phone.

Jason's response was to call the police and accuse Herminio of sexual abuse and Herminio fled to Mexico.

Jason confessed that he had lied.

Magda now faces a very bleak economic future having no bread winner and coping with her feelings toward Jason as well as how to make ends meet: rent, food, special care for Jason on the meager monthly pay check that Jason gets for his condition.

Martin is a bricklayer. Is undocumented.

He lived with his wife and three kids not far from me.

The eldest teenage daughter against all warnings by her Dad was using her cell phone in a unwholesome way. Her dad reacted and the daughter rang the police.

Her father was detained and eventually deported resulting in another split family.

Marlene was born in Mexico. She has had a checkered career as a young person.

She crossed the river to escape her past, married, had three kids, divorced because of domestic violence, and later married a widow with two grown up daughters.

Marlene was in the process of fixing her undocumented status now that she was married to a US citizen.

But then her step daughters obviously jealous that she was stealing the affection of their father, "potted "her as an alien and she was hunted and picked up at a traffic light and put in detention center six hours away.

Her 16 year son assumed the responsibility, and with the help of his grandparents who live over the river did all the paper work to have his mother cleared and sprung after three months during which time he also he took care of his two younger siblings.

Miguel is an undocumented Mexican.

Some years ago he was helping a coyote group take Central American aliens who had been helped to cross the river out to the 100 mile frontier zone and beyond to Houston.

It entailed leaving the highway before check points and taking the party by foot over rugged terrain to meet with transport awaiting them from the Houston side.

On one trip he fell in love with a young Honduran girl and took her back to Brownsville. They now have three kids. Miguel retired from being a coyote.

The money was good but it was too dangerous what with three kids to be a father to.

He is a good dad.

Now as a building laborer they are trying to pay off a house, but there is always the possibility that one day either of the parents will be picked by highway patrol (DPS Department of Public Safety)) who will call the border patrol and will face a deportation order.

Fear of this is a way of life.

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 the moment on the border.

Maybe what elicited it was news of a group of Central Americans from their country controlled by narco-trafficking gangs with money from the US sale of their illegal drugs who were making their way to the US border to seek refuge.

There does not seem to be any need for the National Guard to serve down here: there are no invading armies nor hurricanes.

The border has all sorts of different police forces, local, state and federal which are more aggressively than usual seeking out the illegal alien, the drug trafficker and his drugs, the coyote and or human trafficker /smuggler.

This has always been so in modern times.

The Rio Grande Valley was once part of Mexico.

In those days the people crossed the river as need be trying to eke out their existence in this fertile but desert land. The people were all Hispanic, the same genes, the same culture and the same everything.

But since 1848 a line was drawn in the sand.

At first there was no policing other than to keep people in, namely the escaped slaves,(Fugitive Slave Act 1848) the latter to keep people out meaning Chinese immigrants.(Chinese exclusion Act of 1882)

However from 1924 onwards the border patrolling began, sometimes strictly enforced other times more laissez faire, allowing immigrant workers to serve agricultural and enter the labor force to do what north Americans didn't want to do.

And the locals?

Some families have always been here, some arrived 100 years ago, others later on and many, about 13% " wetbacks" (those who metaphorically swam across the river.)

Life goes on as usual maybe not quite as usual as before the Spanish conquest, or the US annexation, but as usual as can be.

Some moments have been with much border restrictions, others more laissez faire, always having to struggle to survive economically but life goes on come what may.

Maybe there is a spirituality of the border, much dysfunctionality , much stress, but in many ways a spirituality of "primero a Dios " "first God" which means He is in charge come what may.

There are too many brave valley people who struggle as is a democratic right to call out the authorities, over injustice and corruption and bring from the darkness to the light of day things that are happening that should not be.

Many groups come together and speak out at risk.

One of these people I know is a brave, resistant and persistent lady who last year after a visit of her group to Washington D.C., pleaded the cause of the simple folk on the border saying:

"Daily life is changing for the worse in my border community.

"My neighbors live in fear that a traffic infraction may turn into a deportation.

"Local police are being asked to enforce immigration laws and that violates the trust with the community.

"Now the president is proposing spending our taxpayer dollars on expensive and unnecessary walls.

"We already have walls.

"I live right next to one that divides our community.

"Our community is poor. More walls will not alleviate our poverty, pave our streets, or provide the public services we need.

"Walls are not the answer to anything."

• Fr Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand Marist priest working in the Rio Grande Valley on the border the USA with Mexico. He is a third generation kiwi; his first ancestor families traveled from Ireland and 1867 arrived in New Zealand. Like most poor migrants they came looking for a better life.
• This is the second of 6 pieces on his experience of life on the border between Mexico and the USA.

We walked to the Federal Courthouse in 35 degrees C and a powerful "dog days" Texan summer sun. I walked with Eddie Canales, a local hero, from Corpus Christi, who discovered that hundreds of unidentified bodies had been found on the Brooks County's rugged ranch land over the past decade.

Since 2012 the numbers of deaths have climbed. Violence and poverty in Central America and Mexico and a crackdown on the other corridors along the US-Mexican border, have funnelled even more migrants through Brooks County, 70 miles north of the Rio Grande and hour and a half from Brownsville.

Walking to the court house Eddie told me that in late July they discovered the six-day-old corpse of a Guatemalan lady, and then last week two more bodies were discovered.

The smugglers (coyotes) leave the migrants on the southern side of the Border Patrol checkpoint of a small town called Falfurrias, and they have to walk north for several hours through bracken on sandy terrain to avoid the Border patrol. Many get disoriented or sick and then perish from heat exposure and dehydration.

Eddie's outfit is called the South Texas Human Rights Center with the mission to end death and suffering on the northern side of the Rio Grande corridor; to help families find their lost loved ones; to increase awareness of the oft fatal plight of migrants; and the militarization of the border.

Eddie's volunteers set up and service water stations out in the scrub. More ranchers but not all are giving permission for them to put up these water stations on their land along the migrant routes to help prevent dehydration and save lives, especially at this time when temperatures are into the mid to high 30s.

There is opposition to this project with talk of poisoning the water and just recently 18 water stations have been destroyed or stolen. Today there are more than 90 stations established covering an area of some 1200 square miles. Home grown acts of kindness inspire the greater ones.

• Article written by Fr Anthony O'Connor, a Marist priest based in Brownsville, Texas.

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 after all they have been through, Fr O'Connor offers a listening ear.

Fr O'Connor says that despite their detention he has a quiet admiration for the detained minors.

To get to the detention centre they travel around 1,200 miles.

Outlining a typical journey, Fr O'Connor says the kids ‘train surf'; travel on the top of long trains called the "Bestia" (the Beast), they walk and bus through Central America and Mexico, they cross over the border in the desert where there are no high fences and border control and are either caught or in some cases give themselves up.

The minors that make to the detention centres are treated very well, but many get left in the desert, Fr O'Connor says.

Not all end up in detention centres.

"Others make it and cross the border without getting caught and end up hiding for a time in ‘stack houses', where hundreds are locked in a room", he says.

The atmosphere in the adult detention centre is very different, run by the State, they are more like a prison; barbed wire included, he says.

"Those in red overhauls have serious criminal records in the USA, those in "safety orange" have light criminal records and the blues (majority) are just ‘illegals' caught crossing the divide", he said.

With more than 1,300 adult men detainees Fr O'Connor suggests it is not all negative.

"The last time there we had a full auditorium for mass, lots of pretty gutsy confessions too. Who says "men don't cry?

As well as "locals" currently there are three from Ghana, one from Somalia, people from Ecuador, Peru and five Chinese; whom he thinks made their first communion.

Commenting on his new mission, Fr O'Connor says that after being on mission in Peru and Venezuela for more than 30 years, he says it's taken a bit of time to get his feet on the ground.

With the Peru - Venezuela district closing, Fr O'Connor was asked by the Society of Mary's Superior General, Fr John Hannan, join the Marist mission in Brownsville, USA.

Fr O'Connor says while preferring to work with the more physically poor he can see the wisdom of living to saying, "‘Where the captain sends, the sailor goes'. It works for me".

On Tuesday 8 July, 2014, BBC reports:

"The fate of tens of thousands of child migrants in the United States is turning into a major political problem for President Obama.

"This week he is expected to ask Congress for US$2bn to build detention centres and hire new officials - just to cope with the number of unaccompanied children arriving from Central America.

"Many of President Obama's supporters are upset at plans to send the children back to their home countries."

Fr Tony O'Connor is a New Zealand Marist, working in the United States and part of the Society of Mary USA Province Brownsville Parish ministry.

Sources

• Fr John Murphy, Society of Mary New Zealand
• Image: Press TV

Because I had some time before we were supposed to start services, I wandered around the 300 or so folks who shivered in the cold and gathered in the space around the altar (Mass was obligatory—Casa Romero was run by a generous, but iron-fisted Spanish nun).

On the outer edges of the group, I came upon a young, thin girl surrounded by five or six older men. We spoke for a bit; she told me that she was heading out that night with these men, looking to cross through the Wild Horse Desert, a desolate place just north of Brownsville, in an effort to avoid the Border Patrol.

The men, hands stuffed into their pockets, scuffed the ground. They would not meet my eyes, and ignored my handshake.

I found the nun and told her that I was worried about the girl. The nun said to me, "You should be. Please take her to the rectory with you tonight. She is not safe here."

The girl agreed to come and spend Christmas Eve with our religious community that night. She was sixteen years old, and she was from El Salvador. Her arms were covered with scars, about which she would only say, "They burned me with cigarettes."

I gave her my room, for that night, and I took to the couch in the living room. The next morning, as I passed by my bedroom, I saw her kneeling on the floor, her scarred arms held straight out from her sides, her eyes closed, and her head upturned toward the heavens. She was back-lit by the sunlight streaming through the window.

It was Christmas Day, and I felt that God had sent me an angel disguised as skinny, scarred teenaged girl.

She stayed with our community for about two weeks, until some good immigration attorneys managed to get her a special travel permission, and then, into a center that worked with the victims of torture (The Center for Victims of Torture). Continue reading

• Source: Views From Alongside a Border (author's name not noted)
• See also: Gilberto Ramos hoped for a better life, but died alone in a desert
• Image: Fronteras