'We're Not Dogs': Immigration House Offers Safe Place

GUATEMALA CITY -- The U.S. Border Patrol is bracing for another spike in the number of people trying to cross America's southern border this summer. As people make the dangerous journey, a network has developed to help them along the way.
           
Thousands of immigrants flee their homes desperate to escape a future of poverty, violence, or both. That's why Heidy Benitez left Honduras.

She hired a coyote -- a guide -- to take her and her two small children through Guatemala and Mexico to the U.S. border.
           
"He told me we were going to make a stop here in Guatemala, but he just left me here. He said he was going to run an errand downtown and he never came back and he didn't leave me any money," she said.

A Safe Place
           
As coyotes prey on people, often charging thousands of dollars for the promise of getting them to the U.S. border, many end up in Benitez's situation.
           
If they're fortunate they get abandoned near an immigration house, a place that can seem like a mirage. Each night as many as 30 people stay at the house CBN News visited in Guatemala City. They're fed and given a place to sleep for about two weeks.

Juan Luis Carvajal Tejeda is a Catholic priest who runs the house.

"Some of them have already been robbed, abandoned. They are in need. It's the most basic human need to offer a safe place," he said.
           
Immigrants, both those on their way to try to cross into the U.S. illegally and those who've been deported from the U.S. and are making their way home, are welcomed here.
           
The staff helped 23-year-old Olbina Suarez get in touch with her sister after Suarez was caught crossing the U.S. border and deported.

"The journey there was hard," she recalled. "There was a stretch of desert where we had no water, nothing to eat. From there we got caught and they took us to immigration."

Crisis Intervention
 
This immigration house is just one in a network of similar houses across Central America. It's a necessity since thousands of people attempt to cross into the U.S. illegally each year.
          
Here the food, shelter and a place to wash clothes are nice, but immigrants also get to meet with resident psychologist Maria Reyes.
           
"My main focus is crisis intervention. How is the person doing? Is this person frustrated? Any traumas because of deportation or because something happened along the journey?" she explained.
           
Reyes asks the people she counsels why they're going to the U.S. Many want to reunite with family members there or escape violence or poverty. In Guatemala alone, more than half the population lives in poverty, with nearly a third of those living in extreme poverty. In addition, nearly half of all the nation's children under 5 years old are chronically malnourished.
           
With no social safety net and few jobs, many people are willing to risk starving, getting raped or killed if it means a new start in the U.S. 
           
Still, Reyes asks them if they're aware of what can happen to them on their journey. Many of the people she counsels understand the dangers because it's their second, even third attempt at crossing the border.
          
"We tell them and remind them of the risks," Reyes told CBN News. "Luckily they are alive, but will they be as fortunate this time? We talk about those things, the advantages and disadvantages of making another attempt."
           
But she doesn't try to convince them to change their minds or urge them to abandon their dream of getting across the border.
           
"The focus here is humanitarian aid for our brothers and sisters who are in dire need and to whom nobody else is offering a safe place to be fed, to be heard and to regain their strength," Tejeda explained.

A Humane Solution

For people who are deported after living in the shadows of the U.S. for many years, their native country can feel like a foreign place. At the immigration house they can get legal advice, help getting their papers in order and even getting the medicine they need.

Tejeda says he prays the leaders of Central America, Mexico and the United States will seek humane answers to this exodus while moving past the barriers in their hearts and minds.

"Central America and Mexico have become a cemetery for immigrants. This is now a matter of life and death. It's about guaranteeing life. We are human beings. We are not animals. We are not dogs," he said.

After getting deported, Suarez says she's staying put.

"I don't plan to go back to the United States," she told CBN News. "Now what I'm going to do is work and get ahead in life."

Benitez wants to try to get a job in Guatemala. She thinks it's safer than Honduras. Then, after she makes some money, she says she'll try again to get into the U.S.

"Thankfully, God has not abandoned me," she said. "He has not let go of my hand. In the time I've been here in Guatemala, I have found good people who have helped me with my children and I thank God for this house."

The folks at the immigration house have a small window of time to prepare people for what's to come on their journey or help them get their lives in order as they reluctantly return home -- because once the immigrants leave, they typically vanish, never to be heard from again. That leaves the staff to pray that the people they helped found their way.