By Rev. Dr. Dottie Escobedo-Frank
It didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary for the border town of Nogales. My hometown is used to seeing Border Patrol facilities, and we have always noted the humanitarian actions of the staff. They see the same things we do on the ground, and you can’t be human without being moved. So, when a group of United Methodist pastors and church leaders met outside the facility that housed about 1,000 unaccompanied children that we’d been hearing about in the news, well… I wasn’t so impressed. We met outside a gate-like entry that said, “U.S. Border Patrol, Nogales, Arizona.” That was it.
But Special Operations Supervisor, Gustavo Soto, met us outside the gate and began telling us the story of the children. About a month and a half ago the children started arriving from Texas. There are typically around 1,000 children, sometimes more, sometimes less. All the children in this facility are unaccompanied minors. Ok, I don’t know about you, but that fact alone took my breath away. The oldest is 17, and the youngest was a newborn, delivered at Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales.
