BishopAccountability.org

Pandemic, border crackdown hamper Catholics’ aid to migrants

By David Crary
Associated Press via Journal
April 10, 2020

https://the-journal.com/articles/173427

Migrants rest in the chapel of the San Juan Bosco migrant shelter, in Nogales, Mexico. For years, Catholic-led, U-S.-based nonprofits have been at the forefront of efforts to support migrants and asylum seekers along the Mexican border. Tough new border policies, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, have drastically changed their work, much of which now takes place in Mexico.

A migrant picks up a meal from masked workers at the organization’s site in Nogales, Mexico, near the border with the United States, amid the global COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Jesuit priest Sean Carroll joins a group of asylum-seekers from Honduras in the cafeteria of a migrant-outreach center that his organization, the Kino Border Initiative, operates near the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, Mexico. Before the coronavirus gained global attention, Carroll’s agency opened the facility just inside the Mexican border. Carroll – who works full-time in Mexico – hoped to expand a twice-daily meal service but now amid worries about COVID-19, neither venue is being used as a dining hall. Instead, migrants line up outside the two buildings and approach the doors one at a time.

 




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