Experiences

Jeanne

My husband and I were lucky enough to have found Refugee Aid a year ago. That was when local people were still able to host asylum seeking families in our homes. Although that opportunity is rare now, both because ICE is returning families immediately back to Mexico or, when ICE does bring people to be released in Phoenix, the amazing network of churches and our IRC Welcome Center host most of the families.

When we were able to host, we loved it! We hosted 18 families from about December 2018 through March of 2019. Most (but not all) were from Guatemala, most (but not all) spoke Spanish, most (but not all) had 1 or 2 children.

The families needed various kinds of support when they were dropped off. Several times a week, ICE would drop off 50 or 100 people at various churches or the bus station, and the process, that would eventually become the routine, would begin: we’d welcome them as they exited the bus; get them something to drink, and eventually to eat; give them access to a phone to contact their family member/sponsor for the bus or plane ticket to get them where they were going; help them find clothes and a back pack for their journey; make sure they received a medical evaluation (often there was a volunteer medical crew).

After all that, us local families would take them to our homes, let them take a nice warm shower or bath, eat a hot meal, rest in a soft bed. Sometimes it would only be a few hours before they would need to be taken to the bus station or the airport. Sometimes it would be a couple of days. If the family didn’t need to leave until the next day, there would be time for them to do laundry or take a walk to the local park or climb a tree in the back yard or cook some food (just the way they liked it!) or come with me on a trip to the local grocery store.

We met wonderful people, and got to practice our Spanish – or learn how to use the Google Translate app! We learned new games from some of the children, or watched how quickly they figured out how to play solitaire on my tablet. We watched them joyously talking over the computer with friends and family back home or elsewhere in the U.S.

Ahhhh. Then there were the trips to the airport/bus station. Most had been on buses somewhere in the past so getting onto a bus was not a completely new adventure. But here, they would often have to transfer at least 2 or 3 times before arriving at their destination, we (all of us!) had to figure out the eye-numbing Greyhound schedule tickets. It was a challenge for me the first few times I tried to understand them. We had to make sure they knew:

There was a toilet on board;
The buses sometime would stop at a station just long enough to pick up passengers, but not long enough for passengers to get out and buy food/fill up a water bottle; other stops were hours long;
When they needed to change buses, they’d have to figure out which gate to catch the next bus on their journey – and that meant knowing how to read the digital wall schedule!

At the airport, it was a different story. Some of these families had never experienced an elevator, a moving sidewalk or an escalator. We had so much fun with those kids! It was like being at an amusement park. We were always able to get a guest pass from the airline ticket counter so that one of us could shepherd them through TSA (with only their asylum papers) and get them to their gate, show them the water bottle filling station, explain how to find their seats once on the plane, how to tell if the bathrooms were occupied, that the drinks and pretzels on board were free. These are smart, determined and courageous families and every one of our families let us know that they made it to their sponsor’s house.

Kay

I’d been sporadically helping out at the Greyhound Bus depot in Phoenix as asylum-seekers came through, dropped off by ICE by the busload. All have sponsors waiting to help them on their way to new homes in the US where they’ll wait for formal asylum hearings – often months or years in the future. But these sponsors seldom know they’ve been released, and the migrants usually have little or no money, little or no English, and no clues for how to navigate their next hurdles.Volunteers come to the depot to offer migrants cell phones to call their sponsors. We give food to hungry travelers, share toys with children and provide blankets to cold passengers. We call local organizations to find overnight hosts and we arrange rides. When a new depot policy barred migrants from entering the building we moved our efforts outdoors to the depot parking lot. I’d heard the rumors that Greyhound management was threatening to ban ticketless refugees from depot property altogether and I’d read the news stories from other US cities about asylum-seekers abandoned by ICE at city parks. I’d heard, but wasn’t prepared for what I was about to experience. One morning a friend who was the backbone of the Phoenix depot support group at the time, called to tell me that an ICE bus was on its way and the asylum-seekers it carried would not be allowed onto Greyhound property. They would be dropped at a nearby street corner. I jumped in my car and was on my way to 24 St and Buckeye Rd. Minutes later, as the ICE bus pulled away, I was standing in a dirt ditch on the side of the road, face to face with over 50 people, plastic bags in hand and searching expressions on their faces. I was emotionally overcome, wondering how, with my limited Spanish and my single phone I was going to even begin helping these folks who needed so much. After closing my eyes and taking a breath, I forced a smile, looked up into expectant faces and said ‘Hola, bienvenidos’. And thus the ditch work began!Within a few hours other volunteers showed up, resources materialized and by evening everyone was on their way to a sponsor or had a warm bed for the night. Over the next couple months many groups and individuals would come together to assist in the ditch. We’d have trying days and be pushed to seeming limits which only made us more resourceful. It was a time when strangers came together to assist other strangers in need; when comfort and solutions materialized out of the thin-air of ingenuity and sheer grit. It was a time when I was proud of my community and thoroughly awed by the courage of our refugee friends.

Karri

Trust. One of the things that influenced me most to take refugees into my home was the idea of trust. It is the same reason that I feel comfortable participating in home exchanges. I just like the idea of trusting people, and I didn’t believe the rhetoric about how bad the people seeking asylum were.

So, starting in May of last year, my husband and I began taking refugees from Central America into our home. These families had nowhere to spend the night after being dropped off by ICE at the Greyhound station in Phoenix. Without a ticket in hand and without the means of purchasing one, they were left to the streets. Luckily Refugee Aid and other volunteer organizations rose to the need and provided assistance in arranging transportation to their sponsors (note: the sponsors paid for that transportation). Of course, arranging transportation can take time, so while those arrangements were being made, volunteers provided food, a backpack with toiletries and a change of clothes. Even with that help, they still were left stranded on a small strip of land between the Greyhound station and the road while they waited for their bus or plane to depart.

That’s where volunteers like us arrived to pick them up and take them into our homes. Hosting them involved providing showers and a chance to have their clothes washed; a comfortable bed; meals as well as food to take with them on their journey to their sponsors; entertainment to help them escape for a bit from the strain of the trip – but mostly a safe haven where they could rest and relax a bit.

There is much I don’t know about the people who stayed with us. Neither my husband nor I speak Spanish, so communication was limited to what could be done via the Google Translate application. What I do know is that we mostly hosted fathers traveling with pre-teen or teenage sons. They carried only the clothes on their backs and usually had little or no money. All of them carried the weight of their situation with them but had a deep faith that sustained them. They were sad to leave the rest of their family behind and none of them would have made the journey if they had a better alternative.

We provided them with a respite and safe haven for the brief time they spent with us. They expressed their gratitude and prayed that God would bless us for what we had done for them. In the end, I do not know what difference we made in their lives and what has become of them, but I do know that they made a difference in our lives, blessing us with their presence. Indeed, their prayer for us came true.

Refugee Aid is a project of the Southwest Heritage Foundation, a 501c(3) nonprofit corporation. All donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. All donations will be acknowledged in writing. Our tax exempt number is EIN 61-1423580.