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.

27 years in Peru; 5 years in Venezuela; a stint in Australia: 5 years here in the Rio Grande Valley on the border the USA with Mexico.

Now when I go home to "Aotearoa" it is as though I'm somewhat of a migrant.

A migrant is

• very conscious of not being from the place;
• feeling not to have the same rights;
• conscious of and having to come to understand the differences, and
• even learning to not understand even some of these and never of course judging.

In all the places I've been in, getting the correct documents takes time, the authorities and local community has always shown respect.

In the United States, the paper chase is way more detailed and takes much longer time.

However, being a priest and caucasian I it is easiy get the ongoing visas to stay here, and once again there is always respect.

The world has become much smaller and we are often made very aware of the plight of refugees from Asia, Africa, the Middle East crossing into Europe, and creeping down the Pacific.

The plight of these people is 'crude' to say the least, almost unbearable to learn about.

Solutions to issues that migrants face are likely to be far from any possible reality we can imagine.

It may also be true that excessive migration "risks upsetting the way of life".

I might have been be a migrant in various cultural settings, but my plight is nothing compared to the migrants I live among in Brownsville.

Maybe my life experience helps me understand and feel great empathy for migrants, but here on the border of this country whose leaders say is the greatest and the most powerful in the world, the situation for so many has its own type of fear, suffering and hopelessness.

Here there are

• thousands of central American minors escaping the violence and poverty and housed in refuge centers;
• mothers with their little ones some of who are separated from their children;
• mothers deported while the state assumes responsibility for their kids;
• adults: mexican and central americans (Guatamala, Salvador, Honduras and now Nicaragua) seeking refuge and a better life;
• others from these countries who have crossed and outstayed their visas;
• others who have managed to pass the stringent tests for residence;
• kids who have come with their parents at an early age and now have no future to citizenship;
• people who simply have come over the river without documents many of whom live in penury and constant fear.

With so many being deported, so many families being split apart that for many people, anxiety is their lot in life.

The situation is a bit like but far worse than the "overstayer times " in New Zealand in the 70's.

To top it off they are now sending the "National Guard" to the border.

• 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 first of 6 pieces on his experience of life on the border between Mexico and the USA.

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

Fr Tony O'Connor, a New Zealand Marist priest, will soon be leaving Flor Amarillo, Valencia, Venezuela.

His departure will bring to an end 46 years of Marist work in the area.

As well as Fr Tony, two other New Zealand Marists, Fr Pat Brophy and Fr Peter McAfee have worked in Flor Amarillo.

In 1990 a census taken by young volunteers in the barrio found that there were many children who had no school to go to. And so Fathers Pat and Angelo Omodei began a school.

Classes were taught in the sacristy, meeting hall and the Chapel of St Peter Chanel, in Barrio Paso Real.

In 1993 Colegio Juan Claudio Colin was passed over to the movement "Fe y Alegria" leaving behind its informal status and gradually gaining official recognition.

In 1996 a plot of land was acquired in Barrio Bucaral 2, a neighbouring barrio situated some fifteen minutes walk from the original site, with the condition that it be built on within two years .

Over the last five years Fr Tony has managed the completion of the school and as a final task he is overseeing the building of a new Chapel next door to the college.

Financial help for the project was received from friends and supporters in Italy, New Zealand and in many other countries.

Source

• The Marist Messenger
• The Marist Messenger

Saint Peter Chanel might well be the Proto Martyr of Oceania, revered with affection in the Pacific and rightly so. But he also stepped on to the soil of South America when the first Marist Missionaries spent a rest time in Valparaiso, Chile, says Father Tony. But that is not the only reason why he is known, loved and revered in Peru and Venezuela in the places where for over fifty years the Marist Fathers have ministered.

Amidst the poverty and the growing violence of our times "Pedro Chanel" as he is known has become for the people here in "Barrio Paso Real" the "gentle, non-violent one" who could say as he meekly waited for the end "Death is good for me". On the 28^th of April 2011, as on that day every year, the people of the community of San Pedro Chanel , Paso Real, came to celebrate life, remembering their quiet patron, sang songs they had composed to him, prayed with him for his barrio burdened down by drugs, bullets, violent deaths and whose mothers like Mary stand at the foot of the Cross. Pedro's icon and relic were displayed before the altar and valued artifacts from Futuna were placed before him in his honour.

The Feast this year was within the octave of Easter and the coloured pastel materials like the Pacific lava-lava adorned the Cross, the lectern, the altar and Pedro's makeshift shrine. Christ has Risen alleluia, Pedro too lives on in his broken down chapel and out in his suffering barrio in between the high walls of the airport and the fields of sugar cane . Violence and revenge are not Pedro's way ."We sing Chanel" , they sing in Spanish,"Pedro Chanel, Mary's tender voice made a gracious choice in you".

The mural in the photo has Mary with the child Jesus, and St Peter Chanel is seated with the palm of martyrdom in his hand surrounded by children.

Source

• Tony O'Connor
• Image: Tony O'connor