How pair helped immigrant kids
Spending about $10,000, Norman, Demario Davis ‘just did what was needed’
The Lord moved him at 2 a.m. on a Wednesday, as Josh Norman tells it, so the Washington Redskins cornerback acted.
Norman can’t even remember why he was awake in the wee hours of June 20. But he saw reports that more than 2,000 children had been separated from their parents while detained under the sinceabandoned zero-tolerance policy for families caught illegally crossing the United States’ southwestern border.
“Put yourself in somebody else’s shoes,” Norman told USA TODAY. “They’ve got nothing, come here seeking asylum, know nothing of where they’re going to, other than that it’s gotta be better than where they were. Then you get to this place, and they treat you like less than a dog. We’ve lost our touch as a humanity. This is about the kids. So I never hesitated when the Lord said go.”
Norman texted Lauren Phillips, who helps him coordinate charitable work. He wanted to go to Texas the next day to help, but Phillips told him she needed time to identify the right organization.
She soon zeroed in on Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) Texas, a nonprofit in San Antonio that provides legal services for immigrant children families and refugees.
RAICES Texas workers encounter dozens of children a day as they are bused from detention centers to temporary shelters, according to communications director Jennifer Falcon. By this point, the children had been reunited with a parent, and the RAICES Texas staffers try to help them understand the legal process and next steps. Then the families depart on bus rides to destinations in the U.S. where family members and friends already reside.
This information further tugged Norman’s heartstrings.
“About a week ago, his people reached out,” Falcon told USA TODAY on Thursday. “Then we got a text two days ago that Josh had already bought his ticket and was coming down. And we’re so glad that he did just come.”
Norman enlisted the serves of longtime friend and Saints linebacker Demario Davis. Both are members of the Players Coalition, which supports social justice causes. Norman also donated $100,000 to hurricane relief in Puerto Rico last year, and Davis runs children’s outreaches in Jackson, Mississippi.
Davis had recently told his wife, Tamela, of his frustrations over the treatment of immigrants.
“She said, ‘If you feel strongly about it, find a way to do something about it,’ ” Davis told USA TODAY. “She really encouraged me. So when I got the call from Josh, we went.”
The trip came at a time when NFL players find themselves in their final weeks of vacation before they report to training camp in July. But the needs of the children at the border superseded all else.
Norman and Davis landed in San Antonio on Tuesday night and went straight from the airport to a Walmart. From 11:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m., the two crammed six shopping carts full of toiletries, snacks, water, juice, blankets, coloring books, markers, pencils, crayons, toys, soccer balls and backpacks.
But upon checkout, Norman and Davis realized their hotel room wouldn’t hold all the supplies. So they sat in the parking lot and stuffed backpacks, loaded them into their truck, went to the hotel for a quick nap and met RAICES Texas staffers at the bus stops where the children arrived.
“We walked into the place, and you could see how broken they were,” Norman said. “So disheartened. They don’t know where they are, really. Then we brought out the book bags, and it was like flipping a light switch. You could see the darkness replaced by light and the joy.”
Said Davis, “The people started hug- ging us. The most genuine smiles and hugs. They didn’t know us, didn’t know how to speak the language. But it just showed that a little bit of love can go a long way. It was just special, special to see.”
“It was amazing,” Falcon said of the players’ efforts. “They’re hitting a demographic that is different from what they normally would reach. They gave a voice to the voiceless.”
Norman and Davis took the group of roughly 30 children and their mothers across the street to a restaurant. But upon hearing another bus load would arrive later that afternoon, the football players left the families to their lunch and returned to Walmart for another six-cart load of supplies, stuffed backpacks and returned to welcome another 30 children. For that group, the football players ordered 20 boxes of pizza.
Norman said he and Davis spent roughly $10,000 on the supplies and food. But “it wasn’t about the dollar amount,” Davis said. “We just did what was needed.”
In those moments, Norman — a football player admittedly obsessed with superheroes — served as a real hero to children he’d never met and likely never will ever see again.
There, Norman and Davis performed some of the most American actions possible. Giving. Loving. Caring. Sharing.
They did it not for praise, but to encourage and inspire.
“I’m telling you it felt better than anything else I’ve ever done: to help give someone else a fighting chance,” said Norman, who flew back to the D.C. area late Wednesday night. “Someone else laid down their life for us to live in this country and have the freedoms we have. I’ve been provided such riches, and a great life, so why should I not help others?
“All of us have so much more than they do. Every one of us can be a hero. That’s what the U.S. is supposed to be based on. Not all this hate and division.”