{"id":801667,"date":"2019-11-22T16:32:52","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T23:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=374840"},"modified":"2019-11-24T17:11:30","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T00:11:30","slug":"summit-county-faith-leaders-speak-out-against-conditions-for-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-at-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/summit-county-faith-leaders-speak-out-against-conditions-for-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-at-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Summit County faith leaders speak out against conditions for refugees and asylum seekers at the border"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees sleep in tents on the streets and in nearby parks in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, waiting for hearings to enter the United States. <\/strong>
Courtesy Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 Leaders in Summit County\u2019s faith community are speaking out against conditions along the Mexican border after a pair of independent trips to the area in late October and earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb of the Synagogue of the Summit and Pastor Liliana Stahlberg of Lord of the Mountains Lutheran Church each recently completed a trip down to the border, taking the opportunity to assess the situation for themselves in Texas, New Mexico and Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, just south of the border. Each went separately in groups set up by other faith- and human rights-based organizations \u2014 including the Cristo Rey Lutheran Church in El Paso, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and T\u2019ruah, a Jewish human rights nonprofit \u2014 though both returned with similar messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur responsibility as rabbis isn\u2019t to come up with policy solutions,\u201d Gelfarb said. \u201cOur job is to offer moral clarity and to be a call to collective consciousness when a system is unjust.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I saw was, in many respects, unjust, immoral and the desecration of the holiness of every individual. \u2026 I know people are always busy with their day-to-day realities \u2014 feeding their families, working, just getting by. But it\u2019s important that we, as clergy, offer a voice to the voiceless. And the situation is getting worse in this country. Things are getting crueler and crueler.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest impact from the trips came during visits to Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez and a detention center in New Mexico. In Mexico, both women described a scene of disarray with hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers \u2014 not just from Mexico but from Brazil, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and around Central and South America \u2014 sleeping on the streets and in nearby parks awaiting a hearing to determine if they\u2019ll be allowed into the United States.<\/p>\n

The program, part of the Trump administration\u2019s recently enacted Migrant Protection Protocols<\/a>, requires asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry on the border to remain in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, a slow-moving process that kept some families camping on the border for months, according to Stahlberg and Gelfarb. Because of the new policy, immigrant hopefuls can no longer use facilities like the Annunciation House in El Paso<\/a>, which provides short-term housing and hospitality to refugee families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were about 800 people and families waiting in a park, waiting to be processed,\u201d Stahlberg said. \u201cThey sleep and eat in the park. They could benefit from (the Annunciation House), but they have to remain in Mexico. So there\u2019s a house that\u2019s almost empty, while they\u2019re doing their laundry in drinking fountains in the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked with a woman and her kids who were from Brazil, and they were waiting to be processed. They waited for more than a month in the park. We talked with another woman from Honduras, who\u2019s husband had been decapitated, and she ran away because of violence. Violence is what makes most people flee. It\u2019s amazing how many of them there were.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees sleep in tents on the streets and in nearby parks in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, waiting for hearings to enter the United States. <\/strong>
Courtesy Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Back in the United States, Gelfarb said her group was allowed to visit the Otero Detention Center in the New Mexico desert. The group wasn\u2019t allowed to take any photographs inside or speak to anyone being detained, an experience Gelfarb characterized as \u201cpositively Orwellian.\u201d<\/p>\n

The for-profit detention center has come under fire of late due to numerous allegations of inhumane conditions<\/a>, abuse against members of the LGBTQ community<\/a>, unjustified solitary confinement<\/a> and more. Gelfarb said the center resembled a prison more than anything else, with inmates in orange jumpsuits taking on odd jobs for a dollar or two a day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were marketing posters in the entrance when you came in that said, \u2018Believe it or not I care,\u2019\u201d Gelfarb said. \u201cWhen we went to solitary confinement, the \u2018special housing unit,\u2019 they closed all the little windows so we couldn\u2019t see inside. We were told some people are in there because it was their preference to be alone. I found that hard to believe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe faces I saw were not happy. And it was only subsequently we learned there were hunger strikes at the facility, that they\u2019d been charged with using solitary confinement as a punishment and that they\u2019ve had people who tried to take their own lives because of the conditions. The human spirit can only take so much dehumanization and hopelessness. But the officials kept smiling and sticking to their script.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
A Mexican military truck providing food to refugees and asylum seekers along the border. <\/strong>
Courtesy Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Both Gelfarb and Stahlberg noted that they typically try to avoid politics, but said they felt compelled to share their experiences with the community, and to help spread awareness and educate others about the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no compassion,\u201d Stahlberg said. \u201cThere is no humanity. I believe they are being dehumanized for the sake of political discourse. They live in constant fear, which is horrible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m an immigrant myself. I chose the United States for its values. The United States, as I understood from everything I\u2019d heard, is a country that respects human life. In the Declaration of Independence, it talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all God\u2019s children. I believe in the United States and its original values. My message is let\u2019s go back to those values on which this country was formed. And let\u2019s respect every human life. I believe that we can do that, and we can do it in our Summit County community. We can respect the migrants who live here, and we can work to help give them a better life without fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees sleep in tents on the streets and in nearby parks in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, waiting for hearings to enter the United States. <\/strong>
Courtesy Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees sleep in tents on the streets and in nearby parks in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, Mexico, waiting for hearings to enter the United States. Courtesy Rabbi Ruth Gelfarb FRISCO \u2014 Leaders in Summit County\u2019s faith community are speaking out against conditions along the Mexican border after a pair of independent trips […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-801667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 21:49:25","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801707,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801667\/revisions\/801707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}