Border Church Helps Deported Immigrants Return Home

La Prensa-San Diego, News Report, Pablo Jaime Sáinz, Posted: Dec 26, 2006

For many undocumented immigrants in the United States, deportation is a nightmare they hope will never become a reality. Some will try to cross the border again. Others, however, see deportation as an opportunity to return to their homeland, especially during the holiday season.

The United Methodist Church’s Joint Commission Project on Border Issues in San Diego is launching a program to help deported immigrants who have decided to return to their cities of origin in Mexico.

Church representatives in San Diego are working with their Baja California counterparts to hand out a Hope Pack to each of the immigrants that includes basic products for the trip back, such as food, water and personal hygiene products.

The Hope Packs will be delivered to immigrants at the United Methodist Church’s three temporary shelters in Tijuana.

“Talking to immigrants at the shelters, we noticed that many times when they needed the most help it was with how to return to their home towns,” says Rev. Luis Garcia of First United Methodist Church in Chula Vista.

The church plans to extend the program to the cities of Mexicali and San Luis Rico Colorado, Sonora.

The majority of boarders at the Methodist Church shelters in Tijuana are men who have no family or friends in the area. They have left behind everything they know in order to find a better future.

It is often difficult for them to find work along the border because they don’t have a permanent address in Tijuana and many have lost their official documents.

The Methodist Church is giving these immigrants backpacks containing five granola or breakfast bars, four pints of water or juice, peanuts or raisin bags, a pair of new underwear, a new t-shirt and personal hygiene products such as soap and toothpaste.

Hope Packs will also include a copy of the New Testament in Spanish.

“We’re offering them help in all senses: physical, emotional, and spiritual,” Garcia says. “They arrive with no hope after being deported and the word of God gives hope to their lives.”

Garcia says they don’t know how many immigrants will benefit from the Hope Packs.

“Methodist churches along the border have always given help to those that have been deported,” he says. “This is part of what being Christian means,” he said. “This is what motivates us to work for the people.”

During an era when the immigration issue separates families, he says it is important to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate.

One of the goals of the program is to help immigrants in their home states to get jobs, continue their studies or start their own small businesses.

“This is so that they won’t have to sacrifice their families and leave them and so that they can stay together in their hometowns,” Garcia says. “Immigration, when it is an option, is very nice. But when it is something forced due to economic and social factors, it is something traumatic that separates families.”

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