Asylum seekers at border find a little Christmas cheer but miss old holiday traditions
— After fleeing violence in their Guatemalan town, but with their way to relatives in California blocked by continuing U.S. asylum restrictions, a family of 15 joined an Advent candlelight ceremony organized by their shelter just south of the border.
The video above is ABC13 Houston’s 24/7 livestream.
The evening service in the Buen Samaritano shelter’s small Methodist church, which doubles as a cafeteria, didn’t quite compare with the weekslong Christmas celebrations they had loved in Nueva Concepcion. Those included fireworks, tamales made with freshly slaughtered pig and shared door-to-door with family, and villagers carrying aloft a statue of the Virgin Mary from the Catholic church to different homes each day, singing all the way.
“It’s difficult to leave those traditions behind, but they had to be abandoned at any rate,” said Marlon Cruz, 25, who had been a yucca and plantain farmer in Guatemala. “When you go from house to house and hear shots, because of that we would stay locked up at home.”
Tens of thousands of migrants who fled violence and poverty in their home countries are almost certain to spend Christmas in crowded shelters or on the streets of Mexican border towns, where organized crime routinely targets them.
The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court this week not to lift pandemic-era restrictions on asylum-seekers before the holiday weekend. A lower court had already granted the administration’s request to have until December 21 before rolling back the restrictions, known as Title 42. The restrictions have been used more than 2.5 million times to expel asylum-seekers who crossed into the U.S. illegally and to turn away most of those requesting asylum at the border.
It’s not clear when the court will decide. It’s also weighing a group of states’ request to keep the measure in place as migrant arrivals reach unprecedented numbers. In El Paso, Texas, record numbers either crossed undetected or were apprehended and released in recent weeks.
