By Jeff Brumley
Before ISIS and before Ebola, there was “the surge” – the seemingly unending wave of undocumented immigrants, most of them minors, rushing the southwestern U.S. border during the spring and summer of 2014.
Images of overwhelmed government facilities poured into homes along with the angry rhetoric of conservatives lambasting ministries and others rendering aid to the foreigners.
A brief lull in the media hysteria was quickly followed by news that tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children were being placed in the homes of friends and relatives across the nation as their cases awaited adjudication. Again, Christians and others on the right rose in protest against the 63,000-plus children strangers among them.
But for one of those minors, Mely, and for the older sister traveling with her, the most stressful part of “the surge” enroute from El Salvador to – they hoped – their mother in Virginia.
Along the way they endured long hikes, abandonment, hunger, heat and bandits.
It wasn’t until they were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol –somewhere in Texas in May – that they learned their illegal border crossing had a huge political significance.
“We had no clue until we got to the warehouse and saw a television and realized we were part of something really big,” Mely, now 18, said through translator Sue Smith, co-founder of LUCHA Ministries in Fredericksburg, Va.
Mely was six months pregnant when she and sister Carole began the nearly two-week journey from San Salvador. She now knows just how upset many Americans are that they and tens of thousands of other Central American youth are living in the United States.
Mely and Carole were reunited with her mother, Ahida, in Fredericksburg. Their full names are being withheld to protect their identity as they seek asylum in the U.S.
Amerians, she said, shouldn’t feel threatened.
“I wish they knew these are children who are escaping from violence, or they are children who are alone,” Mely said.
‘A humanitarian crisis’
That’s also been Smith’s wish – and not just starting with Mely and Carole’s arrival in Virginia. But she has seen the young women and their mother as yet another human face on what is often a political game of statistics in America.
And to be sure, the statistics are bracing.
According to U.S. Border Patrol figures, the surge in unaccompanied alien children jumped from just under 38,800 in fiscal year 2013 to more than 68,540 in fiscal 2014, which ended Sept. 30.
That’s a 77 percent increase in the number of youths overrunning the U.S. border, and most of them from Central American nations where poverty and violence are rampant.
Federal officials have said the surge represents more than a political or even national security issue.
“I see this influx of families and children as a humanitarian crisis,” Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of the U.S. Border Patrol, said in September news release.
Treated with kindness
Religious groups saw it that way, too, and by mid-summer had decided to ignore critics in their own ranks to bring food, clothing and other supplies to immigrants wherever and however they could. Texas Baptists and Buckner International were just a few of the groups who acted with the compassion that President Obama sought from Congress.
Chris Liebrum of the Baptist General Convention of Texas was among a number of leaders who met with Obama Lackland Air Force Base.
According to a July Baptist Standard story, he urged those in attendance to think of what all of this was like to a 4-year-old in detention on the U.S. border.
“Years from now, when he is grown, I hope he will look back on this experience and think, ‘the Americans treated me with kindness and with respect,’” said Liebrum, head of the BGCT’s disaster recovery program. “From a Christian standpoint, I hope he will say: ‘They treated me in a godly way — they treated me the way Christ would have treated me.’”
‘We learn their stories’
Roughly a decade before “the surge” of 2014, Sue Smith and her husband Greg were saying that about the plight of undocumented immigrants in the Fredericksburg area.
“There’s a real problem in our community,” she told BNG.
The couple began to notice that after arriving in the area after more than 10 years as Baptist missionaries in Costa Rica. There had been a construction boom in the Washington D.C. area that had drawn tens of thousands of workers from Latin America.
When the boom ended, those immigrants found themselves out of work – also by the tens of thousands. As their prospects dwindled, it became obvious to many that existing social services couldn’t keep up with the burgeoning need.
In response, the Smiths in 2004 launched a ministry called LUCHA, a Spanish acronym that translates to “Latinos United through Christ in Solidarity and Support.”
The organization, which partners with Virginia Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, serves about 750 people, of which about 95 percent are undocumented, Smith said.
Their focus is crisis ministry, particularly helping with job loss, illness and deportation. They network with other non-profits and ministries, such as Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and local food banks.
“We focus on people who fall through the cracks,” Smith said.
And they don’t just cycle through clients, she added.
“We learn their stories. We stay with people for the long haul.”
A mother’s longing
It’s certainly been a long haul for Mely, Carole and their mother Ahida. And that’s in miles and years.
The single mom first arrived in the United States – also by crossing the border illegally – in 2001, hoping her daughters would soon be able to follow, she told BNG through Smith acting as an interpreter.
But that didn’t happen. Circumstances and expense kept the three apart for 13 years. In that time, Ahida, who works as in hotel housecleaning and as a restaurant cook, welcomed the arrival of her father and a new son, now 7.
In May, Ahida decided to hire smugglers, known as Cajote, to get the girls the roughly 2,700 miles from San Salvador to the Mexico-Texas border. She said the decision had nothing to do with the buzz about “the surge.”
“I made the decision because my daughter was pregnant and because I don’t leave my other daughter behind,” she said of Mely and Carole, respectively.
Fleeing violence
From the girls’ perspective in El Salvador, getting out was about much more than Mely’s pregnancy.
“Our country and San Salvador used to be safe and calm, but gangs came and killed people,” Carole said through Smith.
Carole, who was attending a local university by then, used to be threatened as she walked home from school.
“Coming home from university I saw three youths being killed in the streets,” Carole said. “That was three days before leaving.”
Those conditions — and being 17 and six months pregnant — gave Mely a sense of urgency to go despite the risks at the American border.
“I wanted to see my mom and I wanted my mom to see my baby,” Mely said.
‘Caught by the Border Patrol’
On May 19 they embarked on a 12-day trip consisting of bus rides interspersed with two- and three-hour walks.
The journey was uneventful until they reached Mexico when, while on foot, they were robbed of cash and other items.
“The assailants ran out with pistols and machetes and chased us,” Mely recalled. “They took our cell phones and all of Carole’s documents.”
Finally reaching the border at the end of May, they were suddenly abandoned by the guides who had been paid to get them across.
“I was caught by the Border Patrol” shortly after crossing, Carole said.
Mely turned herself in two days later, exhausted, hungry, thirsty and scared on the U.S. side.
“I told them I was in pain and pregnant, but it was several hours before I was taken to a hospital,” Mely said.
‘It happened to me’
In Virginia, Ahida had been in on-again, off-again contact with her daughters as they journeyed northward. But she stopped hearing from the girls when they reached the border.
She knew from her own experience what had likely happened.
“It happened to me” when crossing the border in 2001, she said. “I came and was detained within 24 hours.”
Carole and Mely were in custody, but in separate facilities. Authorities were processing the older daughter as an adult, meaning she faced deportation.
Mely, still a minor at the time, was allowed to call her mother. The government called her about Carole.
“I didn’t know where they were, but I knew the youngest one was in a shelter and the older one in a detention facility,” Ahida said.
She hired a lawyer to fight Carole’s immediate deportation and by July 8 both daughters were with their mother in Fredericksburg.
‘God has blessed me’
Mely gave birth to a baby girl she named Ashley on Sept. 24. The sisters are attending public schools and working hard to learn English.
Walls inside the small brick home they share with their mother, grandfather, brother and the baby are dotted with pink sticky notes with words like “picture” and “wall.”
They are also adorned with Christ, Mary and other religious images in keeping with their Catholic faith.
“I have been through a lot of trial, but God has blessed me,” Ahida said through Smith as they sat around the family’s kitchen table.
Much of that blessing has come from Smith’s ministry, which she said has been invaluable before and since Carole and Mely arrived.
And it doesn’t bother her that Smith is Baptist. In fact, it’s the opposite.
“It’s the same God we worship,” Ahida said. “God has blessed me with these people.”
‘We want something better’
Carole and Mely agreed, adding they saw God’s hand in their journey from the moment they arrived in Virginia, and beyond.
They like their school and say American’s they have personally encountered have treated them well.
But they have also watched and read news about the hostility many state and local politicians have toward undocumented immigrants – including children.
“People think we only came to take,” Carole said. “They don’t understand the violence and the killing and that there are no opportunities. We just came here because we want something better.”