Volunteers help migrants ‘one family at a time’

The cold, cramped storeroom at the West Side church on Monday was buzzing with activity: nearly two dozen people hauling boxes and stuffing backpacks with bottled water, snacks, coloring books, hygiene products and other supplies.

The packs were bound for the downtown Greyhound bus station and San Antonio International Airport, where more volunteers for the Interfaith Welcome Coalition would soon distribute them to immigrants and refugees, many of them mothers and children newly released from detention.

I had joined the backpack assembly line at El Divino Salvador United Methodist Church that morning with my 12-year-old son, whose upcoming bar mitzvah required him to complete volunteer work. We found ourselves surrounded by people committed to their mission, yet unpretentious about their reasons for doing it.

“We feel like we live sufficiently, so we help others,” said Peter Maher, 68.

“Just helping,” said Burt Clayton, an 80-year-old retired Methodist minister who was stuffing backpacks with snacks.

Clayton and his wife got involved with the coalition a few years ago by opening their home to weary travelers from Mexico and Central America, offering hot meals and a place to sleep before the families continued their journeys. The coalition helps those who have passed initial checks by immigration officials and are headed to places across the country to join loved ones.

“It was one family at a time,” Clayton said.

He recalled cooking pancakes and bacon one morning for a mother of two as she sat in his kitchen conversing with his wife in Spanish. He was surprised when the immigrant asked Clayton’s wife if he beat her.

“I understood,” Clayton said. “She’s coming from her own experience.”

Steven Enders joined the coalition out of compassion. Twice a week, the 65-year-old ferries hundreds of backpacks in his truck from El Divino Salvador to Travis Park United Methodist Church, where the supplies are stored until volunteers distribute them to arriving immigrants and refugees.

“I just feel so badly for those moms coming, trying to find a safe place for their kids,” Enders said. “And sure, there’s probably some bad guys in there. But there are bad guys everywhere. That’s not a reason not to help.”

Many of the volunteers on Monday expressed disdain for President Donald Trump, whose policies have made the journeys of immigrants even more perilous. “I would say the best thing Donald Trump has done is motivate people,” Clayton said. Enders chimed in.

“We do two things here,” he said. “We make backpacks, and we gripe about Donald Trump.”

This year, after the Trump administration provoked a family-separation crisis on the border, donations to the coalition increased, and volunteers started appearing from across the country, said Jane Fried, a retired pediatrician and the coalition’s backpack coordinator.

Lawyers from New York City, en route to a detention center in Dilley, stopped in San Antonio to help. A Jewish group from Boston flew in and stuffed 1,000 backpacks in two days. Others have come from Seattle, Chicago and Salt Lake City.

In 2017, the coalition handed out 4,826 backpacks at the bus station. This year, that number has soared to 12,263 and counting, Fried said.

“People are angry, I think, and want to do something,” she said.

Each backpack costs the coalition about $25. Donations can be sent to University Presbyterian Church.

Zehera Ali, an interpreter fluent in Hindi, Gujarati and Urdu, was stuffing backpacks with blankets, crayons and water bottles. She had a simple reason for volunteering.

“When God has given you something, I think you should share,” she said. “I’m Muslim, so I don’t mind helping anyone as long as they’re a human being.”

The volunteers, many of them elderly, didn’t flag as the morning wore on. Someone switched on a classic rock station. Boxes were opened, blankets folded, backpacks stuffed.

My son, though, was feeling the strain.

“This is a lot more tired than I get at school,” he remarked.

Nonetheless, driving home afterward, he told me unprompted: He wanted to do it again.