Paul F.M. Zahl: Heroic border agents, pastors confront trafficking of minors and other woes at Texas facilities

Unaccompanied immigrant minors in McAllen, Texas, at Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas

— Border Patrol photos

On-Site Observations, 

U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities,

McAllen/Harlingen, Texas

15-16 January 2020

At the invitation of Pastor Todd Lamphere of Paula White Ministries, I was given the opportunity to visit the U.S. Border Patrol processing center at McAllen, Texas, and the ORR (i.e., Office of Refugee Resettlement) facility for unaccompanied minors, in this case boys age 13-17, at Harlingen, Texas.

{Editor’s note: Paula White is a pastor, televangelist, author and adviser to President Trump.}

The 19 in our group, who were mostly but not all pastors, were ushered right into the center of the complex issue presented by illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border. We got to see the situation there as it is on the ground.  

Because this is a report of personal responses, I shall give just three broad-brush impressions of what we saw and heard:

1) The members of the Border Patrol who guided and accompanied us are of outstanding personal caliber.  That includes Chief Carla Provost, who gave us an entire morning; the chief provost's deputy, Agent Scott; Agent Austin Skero, who briefed us initially; and also the agent in specific charge of the McAllen facility, whose name I forgot to write down.  

These are men and women of obvious, outstanding dedication, professionalism, and self-sacrifice.  Despite the sometimes negative coverage given them by the media, I did not hear one word of reactivity or animus.  In fact, given the pressures that these officers are under, both from within the never-ending demands of their task itself and from the outside criticism they receive, they keep their cool in a way I found extremely impressive. Such over-burdened and under-supported representatives of the U.S. government should be treasured and not excoriated. I think I now regard them as heroes.

P.S. to point (1): At least half of the Border Patrol agents we met are Hispanic and/or people of color.  Command of the Spanish language is an almost pre-requisite to serving there.

2) It was apparent, as we walked through the processing area at McAllen and the protocol was explained to us for each immigrant who is apprehended crossing illegally at the border (i.e., not crossing at a legal point of entry), that many of the cases involve fraud.  Because of an expedited DNA test newly available to the Border Patrol, it is no longer anecdotal that many "family units" apprehended at the border are not what they claim to be.  Or rather, large numbers of minors are being trafficked by the “coyotes’’ (individuals who smuggle people across the U.S. border, usually charging high fees) and cartels and using false identifications, taking unfair advantage of compassionate policies on the U.S. side.  

It was more than sobering to hear the results of the new DNA testing, and to learn that minors are being routinely "passed back and forth" for the enriching of human traffickers. This story needs to be told.

P.S. to point (2): No one is being kept in cages.  The chain-link fences we saw are what you see on any child's playground at school -- to protect and not imprison.  Young people being held in the first 24 hours of their apprehension can go from fenced-in area to most other fenced-in areas, freely enter adjoining playground space, and connect with their friends. There is well founded concern about minor-on-minor sexual abuse, and that is the main reason for see-through fencing. Even so, although there are no cages, the Border Patrol is preparing to replace the chain-link fences with see-through plastic and/or glass barriers. 

3) Among the true heroes of the immigration crisis at the Southern Border are the Christian churches.  We stayed at a Baptist retreat center, one campus of which is the leased ORR (i.e., Office of Refugee Resettlement) facility at Harlingen.  The chaplain of that campus, which has a capacity of 593 minor boys and is currently home to 160, is the Rev. Eli Lara, who has God's Spirit simply  shining out from his face.  Pastor Lara's ministry in recent years to the hundreds and hundreds of teenage boys who have been housed  in Harlingen, almost all of whom are from the "Northern Triangle" of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, is as bright a light to young sufferers and strugglers as I have ever witnessed.

The Christian churches of the Rio Grande Valley, both Protestant and Catholic, have stepped up to the plate in a very big way.  They are doing, right there, what churches in other parts of the country say that believers should be doing.  Here in Harlingen is a story that merits the widest possible coverage: the Rio Grande faith communities' putting their shoulder to the wheel in service of God and neighbor.  

In summary,

1) Our U.S. Border Patrol members are over-taxed, under-resourced, and came across to us as uniformed channels of efficient compassion and rough-and- ready sacrifice;

2) The on-again, off-again flood of immigration at the border has a lot to do with intentional fraud, i.e., the criminal taking-advantage of sincere aspirers for a better life by unscrupulous and greedy “coyotes’’ and cartels.  Children and minors are grievously victimized in this cycle.;

 (3) The Christian churches of the Rio Grande Valley are doing unheralded superb work, "works of love" in the best Kierkegaardian sense — that is, issuing in a harvest of new disciples and new hope within the battered, vulnerable population they are now serving.  And I heard no one blowing their own horn.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Zahl

The Rev. Dr. Paul F.M. Zahl

Dean/President emeritus

Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry

Ambridge, Penn.

Paul F.M. Zahl, a retired Episcopal minister, is also a writer and theologian.