Thread: NJ: soup kitchen for illegal aliens

AN ANGEL'S FOOD RUN
Woman cooks for those who fear deportation as much as hunger
Sunday, March 01, 2009
BY JEFF DIAMANT
Star-Ledger Staff

It is 30 degrees on a Friday evening, just 14 with the wind chill. Twenty-one Hispanic men, all undocumented immigrants who could use an extra layer or two, bump into each other as they form a shivering, ragged line across an empty parking lot in Essex County.

They arrived at this spot with hope that around 6 p.m. a cheerful woman in a fur hat would drive up in a blue Nissan Altima laden with food she cooked herself, and some donated clothes.

The hope was well placed.

"When I reach the parking lot, they are looking to see if I'm coming," says Miryam Torres, who lives in East Orange. "And when they see me, they get so happy. And that makes me happy."

"After a hard week of work, their smiles -- and knowing that at least they are eating today -- make me happy."

Let others debate the finer points of immigration policy, the pros and cons of amnesty, deportation and raids directed toward the estimated 11 million people who are in the United States illegally. Miryam Torres, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Ecuador in her 20s, deals with the immigration problem in her personal way -- with pots and pans.

No agency or church is involved. Torres, whose day job is field representative for the Essex County Division of Senior Services, cooks and delivers the food on her own, with some help from her brother Wilfrido.

She has been doing this since October, after learning during a chance encounter that undocumented immigrants were checking Dumpsters behind nearby fast-food restaurants for scraps.

Now, once a week, she turns her home into a mini-soup kitchen. Each Thursday she cooks four chickens with pinto beans. She serves it the next evening, with rice, to immigrants who are afraid to rely on established soup kitchens because of rumors that federal agents may be waiting there for them.

The cost of the food is about $60 a week, or more than $3,000 over the course of a year, all borne by Torres. A mother of five children ages 28 to 40, she makes $44,500 a year in her county job.

"I wish I could do it more often, but all I can afford now is one day a week," she says. "I am not a rich person. I pay my bills. I live check by check. I don't know how, when I go to the supermarket, I buy what I need.

"I can't stop now, because I can't go to sleep knowing that there's people who are not eating and looking for food in the garbage."

'EAT WELL'
Distribution is fast. Seconds after pulling up, Torres and her brother pop out of the car and open its back doors. The seats are packed with bags of clothes, 24 Styrofoam containers of hot food, and bottled water.

The clothes go first. All are distributed in four minutes.

"Es una camisa grande!" Torres' brother shouts, holding a large shirt.

Torres, holding a button-down shirt, touts it as good "para iglesia domingo" -- for wearing to church on Sunday."

Hats. Pants. Sweaters. Gloves. Jackets. All are claimed seconds after Torres and her brother hold them up. Shivering laughs are directed at one decidedly non-Irish man who at this moment is trying on a jacket he picked out, with "Erin Go Bragh" in broad lettering. The jacket has an extremely large green stitching of a four-leaf clover. Whatever the color, the coat is free and it will be warm.

Torres received the clothes from local donors.

"Thank you," one man in a grimy jacket says in Spanish after receiving a shirt and sweater. "I haven't changed clothes in three days."

The wind is noisy and frigid this evening, and the rumbling of street traffic and passing trains make this a truly miserable place to dine. But the men here, who months or years ago crossed the Mexican border dreaming of a better life, are -- for the moment, at least -- excited.

The food is ready for dispersal. The line, disrupted for the clothing giveaway, re-forms. Plastic silverware and napkins are distributed, and then, one at a time, each man in line receives a Styrofoam container and a "Buen provecho!" -- "Eat well" -- from Torres.

Without exception, each man takes his container and a bottle of water to the side wall of a store facing the parking lot, then sits down or squats to eat. They are a foot or two from each other, but there is no talking, just chowing down. Conversation would let the food go cold.

"It's a blessing for the food," says a man from El Salvador named David, 47, after eating. "We're thankful. Thank God."

David has been in this country for three years with no official documents, and lives in a local apartment with seven others, he says through a translator. Most of that time he has survived on landscaping jobs, but there has been no work since fall, and other day-labor jobs have dried up as well.

"December, January, February -- nothing," he says. "Because of the cold and the snow."

Most of the men interviewed, just a minuscule percentage of the estimated 470,000 New Jersey immigrants who are in the United States illegally, said they plan to return to their home countries unless their conditions improve.

"If I don't find work I'm going to go back, because I can't live like this," said Carlos, a 43-year-old man from El Salvador, who said he has slept in an abandoned home since April, when he lost his landscaping job.

When he had work, he said, he made $500 a week and sent $400 of it to his family. Now he shares the abandoned home with five other men and sleeps under three covers in the cold.

PARENTS' EXAMPLE
Torres first learned of the hungry immigrants from a 65-year-old man who visited her East Orange office last fall to ask for assistance. Since he was completely undocumented, she could not help him through her job.

"He said, 'Miryam, I have not eaten for two days.' The man was crying. That day, it was a Tuesday. I said, 'On Friday, I'm going to start cooking for you. Not a big meal, but it's going to be a meal, that I'm going to cook."

It was hard to find anyone, even in the contentious arena of immigration politics, who thinks what she is doing is wrong.

"It basically sounds like a voluntary humanitarian action, the equivalent of a personal soup kitchen," said Mike Hethmon, general counsel with the Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington, D.C., which litigates against illegal immigration.

Although federal laws prohibit hiring, harboring and sheltering of undocumented immigrants, exceptions allow institutions such as emergency shelters and soup kitchens to provide assistance, as long as those providers are run openly and don't turn non-immigrants away, Hethmon said.

Torres has long been active in her community, volunteering for years to help the police department translate domestic violence complaints and appearing weekly on a local Spanish radio station to promote efforts of social-service agencies. But this is the first time she has acted as a one-person soup kitchen.

"I learned this from my parents," she says. "I remember, my father used to have a bakery. We had a plate of food every day, and enough to eat. And so my father said, all the kids in the neighborhood that don't have anything to eat, they can come and eat in our house. And that's how I learned that we have to share."

Staff writer Tanya Batallas contributed to this report.

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While I appreciate her humanitarionism, she is focusing on "the race" while there are plenty of American families in the same situation. Isn't this just aiding illegal immigrants, which, the last I heard was against the law?

I bet if someone wanted to run a soup kitchen for American citizens only the Gov't would shut them down.

Since she is paying it all with her own money, I can't get too upset with her. But she should go the extra mile and take them in and and pay for their health care. She should adopt all the illegals so they are not the tax payers' burden.

If these illegal aliens are now so destitute that they are unable to eat, or even have shelter....then the writing is on the wall....they need to go back to their home countries.....America's welcome mat has worn out.....perhaps Ms. Torres should be contacting the Consulates of the nations of origin of these illegals and asking them to pitch in to get them tickets to go back home.

Originally Posted by legalatina

If these illegal aliens are now so destitute that they are unable to eat, or even have shelter....then the writing is on the wall....they need to go back to their home countries.....America's welcome mat has worn out.....perhaps Ms. Torres should be contacting the Consulates of the nations of origin of these illegals and asking them to pitch in to get them tickets to go back home.

This is similar to what I was thinking. They say they come here to work, to feed their families. If they aren't getting work, can't clothe themselves, are living in abandoned buildings (health hazard and disgusting; where do they clean up, use the ummm, facilities, etc?) and can't feed themselves, instead relying on handouts, what exactly are they doing HERE? How are they better off? It sounds like they are in the exact same situation, so should go home. It's really nice (sarcasm) that one was making $500/week and sending $400 to a foreign country, especially considering that day laborers don't pay taxes (social security, medicare, federal or state), but 4/5 of his income was not used to purchase anything in the US, and he was living on only $100/month? In other words, he's been getting handouts all along, even when he was making good money, because no grown man can live on $25 a week after paying rent, utilities, food, clothing, soap, laundry. It's just not possible. His family in a 3rd world country did not need $400/month. The cost of living is just not that high. He didn't want to support his family, he wanted his family to live like royalty. I just don't understand the way some people think. How exactly are they helping our economy by living on $100/month?