Migrant helper released from Mexico following detention

— A Texas woman who drove to Mexico to deliver Christmas gifts to a sprawling refugee camp housing people waiting for U.S. court dates said Wednesday she was detained by authorities there for two days.

Anamichelle Castellano said she and another volunteer for her nonprofit group were stopped Monday at a bridge crossing from Brownsville, Texas, to Matamoros, Mexico. She said authorities discovered a small box of ammunition in the car she was driving, which she said was left by her husband.

Mexico has strict laws against entering the country with guns or ammunition. Those laws occasionally ensnare Americans crossing the border.

Castellano said she spent Monday night sleeping on a couch with her 9-year-old daughter in a government office. She gave a statement Tuesday to someone she believed to be a prosecutor, then was allowed to leave a few hours later. The prosecutor’s office in Mexico’s Tamaulipas state did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Castellano and her husband, Jehu, operate a nonprofit called the Socorro Foundation. They are among volunteers trying to help thousands waiting in Mexican border towns to seek asylum in American immigration courts.

President Donald Trump’s administration has prevented many asylum seekers from entering the country or removed them from the U.S. while their cases are pending under a policy known as “Remain in Mexico.”

“Our faith is very strong,” said her father, Genaro

Lopez, on Wednesday. “God didn’t blink. He had a plan.”

Castellano said she and a group of volunteers had worked late into the night to wrap presents for children at the Matamoros camp, which consists of hundreds of tents pitched on the land next to the Rio Grande, the river separating the U.S. and Mexico in Texas.