Small town, big controversy
As family separation debate heats up, McAllen, Texas, is ground zero for intercepting immigrants.
McALLEN, Texas – The eyes of the world have focused on this small city along the Mexican border amid cries of human rights abuses by the Trump administration under its policy of separating parents and children who illegally cross into the USA.
The U.S. Border Patrol’s McAllen Station is the busiest for apprehending and detaining immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally, and protests have erupted around the area.
Much of the attention has centered on a sprawling, red-roofed detention center, where dozens of Border Patrol agents have locked up hundreds of people for processing and removed children from their parents’ care while the families are inside the facility.
“It’s about time the whole country wakes up and says ‘This is wrong,’ ” said Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs a respite center for immigrants in this town of about 130,000 people. “This is their suffering. But I’ve been seeing this suffering for four years or more.”
Pimentel’s shelter, formally known as the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley Humanitarian Respite Center, helps 25 to 200 immigrants a day. The immigrants, who are reunited with their children when they leave the detention center, walk more than two blocks after being cut loose by the federal court system and Border Patrol officials, having been held two to four days.
Adults are fitted with GPS ankle monitors and ordered to appear in court again. Then they’re allowed to move deeper into the United States to stay with friends or family.
The immigrants who arrive at Pimentel’s shelter get their first hot meal in weeks, along with the opportunity to pick out clean clothes from donations. Wednesday night, crying babies were quieted with bites of warm beef stew, and older kids watched Telemundo streamed online. Counselors chatted with them about simple medical needs and offered them English placards to
“It could be worse. But they could be better, absolutely.” Jim Darling Mayor of McAllen, Texas
help the Spanish-only speakers navigate the USA.
President Donald Trump rescinded the practice of separating families this week but argued that the “zero tolerance” policy that criminally charges immigrants caught crossing the border illegally is a necessity, saying they are “infesting” the USA with crime and drugs.
Such talk makes McAllen Mayor Jim Darling cringe. Darling said McAllen has a booming economy, thanks to a foreign trade zone and low crime. He said there’s no sign of the gangs Trump talks about and wishes more people would come see McAllen for themselves.
“We’re a nice city,” he said Wednesday. “It’s unfair that a couple of days of news is painting us this way.”
Like many longtime residents, Dar- ling is frustrated that journalists seem to have only just discovered that families are often separated after being detained at the border, whether simply inside the centers or indefinitely under the zero tolerance policy. The large detention centers drawing international attention were commissioned by President Barack Obama in 2014, and after an initial flurry of stories, journalists largely ignored them and the specifics of how migrant families are treated.
Darling, who has visited the detention centers, said he’s come away reassured that people are being treated well: “It could be worse. But they could be better, absolutely.”
Pimentel, who led a large march Wednesday evening that briefly surrounded a federal courthouse, said she’s glad the world is finally waking up to immigration issues on the U.S.Mexican border.
Protester Arnold Serna, 23, said he hoped people of faith would rally to the cause and persuade Trump to alter his stance on immigration: “There’s so much hateful rhetoric.”