A D&S Special Report

El Paso

A Tale of Twin Cities: How Politics and the Pandemic Are Affecting Binational Life at the U.S.-Mexico Border

Upon entering El Paso from the El Norte border crossing, people pass under a welcome sign over El Paso Street, a popular shopping area. (Photo by Andrea Gabor)

By Melissa Bacian and Sophia Carnabuci

For Willivaldo Delgadillo, a writer and professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, growing up as binational citizen in the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez region never felt like he was setting foot in another country.

“I always think of certain areas of El Paso not as El Paso but as ‘North Juarez.’ And of course, Juarez is really influenced by El Paso and the United States,” said Delgadillo, 59, who is a U.S. citizen and currently lives in Juarez. “If you cross the bridge, just because it’s another country, you have to show your passport and sometimes there are very long lines to cross, but if you just go, in either direction, it still feels like it’s part of the same city.”

The symbiotic relationship between El Paso and Juarez is one that runs through many Mexican-Americans like Delgadillo.

“(It’s) sort of hard to understand if you’re not from the border where people literally have a piece of the family in each country, and not that they’re communicating to each other through WhatsApp or sending packages on Christmas, or whatever, but literally visiting every weekend,” said Josiah Heyman, an anthropology professor at UTEP who studies border issues.

But the ties have been tested in recent years with the surge of Central American migrants and refugees who have passed through the two cities, the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration and the mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart. In mid-March, The Trump administration shut down all nonessential crossings on the southern and northern borders, including shoppers, visitors, tourists and migrants, in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus, further scrambling the life of binationals in the El Pass-Juarez region.

A mural depicting the twin-city relationship between El Paso and Juarez in El Paso’s El Segundo neighborhood, just steps from the Paso del Norte bridge connecting the two cities. (Photo by Vera Haller)

With no confirmation on the re-opening of the U.S.-Mexico border, the twin cities are temporarily separated, leaving the future of a long-standing binational culture uncertain.

Together, the two cities form a vibrant urban center spanning the border of western Texas and Mexico. Juarez’s population is more than 1.3 million, making it the eighth largest in Mexico, according to the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Research and Evaluation at UTEP. El Paso has a population of almost 840,000 residents, according to the U.S Census Bureau.

El Paso is located far from other large metropolitan areas – about a nine-hour drive from Dallas and eight hours from San Antonio, making its connection to Juarez even more important.

Before the coronavirus, crossing the border was a part of daily life for many. In 2019, more than 300,000 individuals legally crossed the El Paso Station, one of the sectors linking El Paso and Juarez, according to the Bureau of Transportation.

Friar Stephen Pitts, the religious education director at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Paso, described the unique relationship Juarez and El Paso have with one another. “It’s incredible to live in a bilingual place. People here want their kids to speak Spanish. It’s part of their culture they want to carry on,” he said. “People come from across the city to do their first communion or confirmation here because it’s a part of their heritage.”

Juarez and El Paso have a long and storied history dating back to the 1500s when Spanish explorers came across the two mountain ranges rising out of the desert with a deep chasm in between. They named the site El Paso del Norte (the Pass of the North: Modern day Juarez, El Paso and Chihuahua.)

In 1682, five settlements were founded south of the river – El Paso del Norte, San Lorenzo, Senecu, Ysleta and Socorro. The area soon became a trade center for agriculture and eventually became the region we know as Juarez.

But the cross-border nature of the two cities has long posed challenges as well.

Many in the region have been affected by violence in Juarez dating back to the late 1980s and drug trafficking organized by a group called the Juarez Cartel, run by Vincente Carrillo Fuentes. In the early 2000s, rival gang warfare between the Sinola and the Juarez Cartel caused an increase in crime in the city of Juarez. Though drug trafficking has not disappeared, there has been a notable decrease. This in turn, has helped tamp down other crimes; in 2010, 3,500 homicides were reported, while in 2014, it had dropped down to roughly 430 homicides.

Then in 2019, the surge of Central American migrants overwhelmed the social-service sector of El Paso. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection held over 13,400 migrants in custody at the time, including nearly 3,500 in El Paso. “A crisis level is 6,000; 13,000 is unprecedented,” stated border patrol commissioner Kevin McAleenan during a 2019 news conference.

The 30-foot-tall “Grand Candela” memorial in the parking lot of the Cielo Vista Walmart store in El Paso commemorates the victims of the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting. When illuminated at night, “the light transcends borders and connects our hearts as one community,” reads a plaque at the base of the memorial. (Photo by Vera Haller)

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric also hit the El Paso-Juarez region particularly hard. When a man armed with an AK-47 walked into an El Paso Walmart and killed 22 people on Aug. 3, 2019, the attack was seen as a direct attack on the twin cities’ binational character.

The store, located in Cielo Vista, is the closest Walmart to the border and it is where many Juarez residents come to shop. Out of the 23 victims, eight of them were Mexican citizens, leading many to believe this was an attack on the Latino people.

For a month after the shooting, Friar Mario L. Serrano, who runs the Catholic Church’s ministry program at UTEP, went to the Walmart and walked through the store, lending help to anyone who needed it. “I often wondered what it was for Martin Luther King Jr. to minister in such a toxic environment,” said Serrano. “Or I don’t think I have to wonder anymore. Because that’s the reality, right? So many of them were just fearful right of saying like, Father Friar this is crazy, how can we address this?”

Now, the coronavirus has further disrupted life in the area. For many individuals, crossing the border is simply a means of getting to school, work or access to adequate health care. Store owners rely on profits from Juarez residents who come to El Paso to shop. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, resulting in the partial closure of the U.S-Mexico border, hundreds of binationals are left with no choice but to put an indefinite pause on their lives.

“More people come to the food pantry now with the pandemic,” said Pitts, noting that the church has moved food distribution to the outdoors. “The elderly that used to volunteer were all sent home and its parish employees doing it now. Some of the landlords are still trying to evict people, which is insane.”

The events of recent years have done much to change life at the border.

“When I was growing up, I remember we would go to Juarez and come back; it was very easy because there was a time when you wouldn’t even show a birth certificate,” recalls Joash Alanis, a student at UTEP, where more than 960 students out of the 25,000 have a permanent Juarez address, according to the university’s website.

Father Friar blessing incoming UTEP students who are part of the Catholic Church’s ministry program. (Handout photo from Father Friar)

Throughout the years, stricter measures have been set in place, making crossing between the intertwined cities a long and agonizing wait, especially for students who often have to wake up before sunrise to get to class on time.

A rally is held outside the Buddhist temple on the UTEP campus. The university’s architecture is styled after the Himalayan country of Bhutan. (Handout photo from Professor Heyman)

“I tutor at a middle school, and at that middle school there’s usually a lot of them that come from the other side of town,” said Alanis, noting that many of them will be falling asleep in the middle of class. “I’ll talk to the kids and be like, what’s going on? They’ll be like ‘I’m just so tired. I woke up at three in the morning.’”

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, UTEP has transitioned to distance learning. Professor Heyman described the existing efforts the university already had in place, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, to ensure its students would not fall behind. “Professors are aware of the fact that students have to work for a living, and that they’re commuting.”

Nonetheless, if the partial closure of the border wall becomes a complete closure, he is unsure of what the future might hold for binational individuals. “If they do something like that at the border, it’s going to have a whole bunch of wrenching effects on our students at the university, it’s going to have wrenching effects on binational families. It’s going to have an effect on the economy.”

Amanda Salazar and Anacaona Rodriguez Martinez contributed reporting to this story.

Immigration Laws Form Barriers More Powerful than a Border Wall

Migrants impacted by the “Remain in Mexico” protocols attempt to cross the border to seek medical care in the U.S. (Photo by Nicolas Palazzo)

By Juan Diego Ramirez and Annmarie Gajdos

Jonathan, a 28-year-old Salvadoran who asked that his full name be withheld for fear of deportation, traveled through Mexico by bus, taxi and foot until he reached the U.S. border at El Paso on Oct. 22, 2018. After turning himself into border patrol agents to claim asylum, saying he was persecuted at home for identifying with the LGBTQ community, he spent 15 months in immigration detention centers near the border before he won asylum thanks to the efforts of attorneys from Las Americas, an El Paso legal aid organization.

“Before coming into contact with Las Americas, I was contemplating taking my life,” said Jonathan, who spoke during a phone interview from his new home in New York, where he settled in January. “Being incarnated was traumatizing. It impacts you mentally. They chain your feet. They treat you as if you are a murderer or a drug trafficker.”

Jonathan’s struggles are representative of the tangled and complicated legal battles that many immigrants face at the Mexican border, where immigration lawyers navigate a labyrinth of new laws and policies implemented by the Trump administration to curb immigration, said Nicolas Palazzo, the Las Americas attorney who represented Jonathan.

“I think people don’t understand how insignificant the wall is,” Palazzo said during a Zoom interview in April, referring to President Trump’s promises to build a wall along the border with Mexico. “The real problem is the policies and the laws that prevent people from coming into the country. It’s not the wall. The policies are effective. They accomplish what they are intended to accomplish.”

The Trump administration has implemented some of the toughest anti-immigration laws in recent American history. Under his policies, the number of immigrants detained at the border has risen significantly. In 2016, Trump launched his presidential campaign based on nationalistic promises that called for restricting immigration from Central and South America. During his campaign, Trump also referred to Mexicans, as rapists, drug smugglers and criminals. These comments were a mere preview of how his administration would eventually deal with immigration issues through the creation of stringent immigration laws.

A mother holds her child while awaiting legal counsel from the Las
Americas staff. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las
Americas)

In 2017, Trump enacted several executive orders calling for diminishing the Central American immigration influx to the United States. These included Executive Order 13767, which calls for the construction of a physical border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border; Executive Order 13768, which punishes “Sanctuary Cities” that implemented immigrant protection laws by withholding federal funds; and Executive Order 13769, coloquially referred to as the “the Muslim ban,”  which restricts residents of majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. All three Executive Orders were challenged in court.

However, these new laws didn’t stop waves of Central American migrants, like Jonathan from El Salvador, from seeking asylum at the southern U.S. border. In 2019, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol apprehended 977,000 migrants, the highest apprehension rate since 2009. In May alone, 144,000 migrants were apprehended.  “It was overwhelming. The number of people that we were dealing with was just astonishing,” said Ernesto Mena, a border patrol agent in the El Paso sector.

In spring 2018, controversy erupted when the Trump administration implemented a policy to separate children from their families, culminating in the misplacement of 1,500 children during the temporary detention period. Many migrants came as family units from countries plagued with poverty and violence. During a short time period, mass migration overwhelmed the American immigration system. Migrants entered the country illegally, without inspection, or would arrive at a port of entry seeking asylum. As a result, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol would either detain or release these individuals while they were physically present in the United States to wait for a decision on their cases.

A migrant mother zips her child’s coat while waiting to cross from Mexico to the U.S. in February 2020. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas).

During detention, families were not allowed to await their trials together; the Trump administration blamed the policy on laws that prohibit underage children from being kept in adult prisons. This caused government workers to physically separate family members, resulting in an onslaught of civil and human rights lawsuits against the Trump administration. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 4,200 children have been separated from their parents at American immigration detention centers since February 2020. “Child separation started in El Paso and that’s where it was seriously implemented,” Palazzo said.

Las Americas staff attorney Nicholas Palazzo works on a case during a wave of migrant arrivals from Central America. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas)

He said he met Jonathan while working with migrants detained at the Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico. Before ending up in Otero, Jonathan was placed in two other detention centers in the area. Palazzo helped Jonathan win his asylum case in January 2020, resulting in a successful end to his 15-month detention period.

Recently, Palazzo has been working with migrants who have been returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Also referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, this piece of legislation requires that migrants “wait outside the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings.” This has made it difficult for lawyers working with Las Americas to adequately defend their clients. “I represented three of the six cases in El Paso that have actually won asylum from MPP, which just shows you how difficult it is for people,” said Palazzo.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Palazzo said that as an immigration lawyer his work has become even more complicated. On March 21, President Trump invoked Title 42, which suspends the entry of people and imports from Mexico and Canada to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.

“Since we are in a pandemic and we do want to protect the U.S. from any health risks, when somebody tries to enter the country illegally, we’re not going to take them to any of our facilities,” said U.S. Border Patrol agent Sara M. Cabrera. “We’re going to fingerprint them to make sure that they’re not felons, that they’re not wanted here in the U.S., then we’re going to take them to the nearest port of entry and expel them from the country.”

Palazzo described what was happening at the border now as “turn-backs,” meaning that migrants are being sent back to Mexico without being processed. “They are essentially closing off all these people from getting any form of relief from the United States. It is frustrating,” he said, adding that lawyers are no longer allowed to travel to Mexico and work with clients who have pending cases.

Migrant children play at a shelter in Juarez while the Las Americas team works on intakes. (Photo by Paige Censale, Communications Counselor at Las Americas)

“I don’t anticipate these policies are going to end soon, even if the pandemic slows down, because what we see is the pretext of the virus weaponizing the border against migrants and it’s effectively closed off the whole border,” he said.

 

Advocate Fears for Environment Amid Border Wall Expansion

Environmental advocates say expanding the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border will harm the area’s delicate desert ecosystem. (Photo courtesy of the Southwest Environmental Center.)

By Christian Lewis

The border between the U.S. and Mexico spans nearly 2,000 miles, running along the southern confines of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there are about 354 miles of pedestrian barriers and 300 miles of vehicle barriers, for a total of 654 miles of border walls. During his campaign for president, Donald Trump had promised to complete the border wall. So far, his administration has built 110 miles of new barriers, mainly replacing existing structures. Administration officials said earlier this year that the federal government was on track to build more than 450 miles of additional wall along the southern border by the end of 2020.

Kevin Bixby (left) joins a 2018 demonstration calling for a halt to border wall construction. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Yaroch)

Environmental advocates have long voiced concerns about the ways border walls adversely affect the environment of this richly biologically diverse area. According to Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center, the border region is home to more than 1,000 wildlife and 430 plant species. He said the border wall has prevented the interbreeding of Mexican gray wolves and divided its population, as well as cut off access to water for species such as the Sonoran Pronghorn, an ungulate related to goats and antelopes.

Advocates like Bixby, who has led the Las Cruses, N.M-based organization for eight years, are trying to raise awareness of the region’s fragile ecosystem and to halt construction of additional barriers along the border. He talked about the center’s work and mission during interviews in April. The interviews have been edited for length and clarity

How is President Trump’s plan to expand the border wall going to further impact the environment?

The current Trump design is 30 feet of metal steel square rods that are stuck into concrete. Under (President George W.) Bush, he built 650 miles and half of it was these pedestrian fences and the other were what we would call lethal barriers which are generally not too big of an issue for wildlife to crawl through. That was the extent of the problem when Bush left office and that was not too bad for wildlife. And then along came Trump with his signature campaign promise. So, he starts replacing the existing barriers, taking out these vehicle barriers and replacing them with these 30-foot pedestrian fencing which we call the wall. In the beginning of his administration, we had heard that this was nothing to worry about and this was just replacing what was already there but we knew, those of us that were actually down there at the wall, what he was replacing the vehicle barriers with was much worse for wildlife. He is also building where walls were not there.

What do you think about the federal government using loopholes in funding to pay for the wall’s construction?

It makes me angry, but it also makes me feel helpless. We have a couple of lawsuits we are a part of, but we have nothing truly significant. But you touched on the fundamental problem, which is that in 2005, Congress gave the secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive laws to build border barriers. And this was used by Bush and it has been used by Trump in every single border wall project. The list of laws waived vary from project to project. The Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act are always waived. Those are fundamentally important laws but the administration knows that those laws are the ones that need to be waived in order to dodge legal action. Another one that is always disregarded is the Native American Grave Protection Act, which is really important in the southwest. You can find Native American graves and sites all over the place and if you are building a wall like the border wall you are bound to run into them.

I have read about your press release in January 2020 about a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop construction of the border wall. Can you tell me more about that?

We actually placed that back in 2018, and we had challenged the use of the waiver authority, and there is a similar lawsuit challenging that same authority. There was one from a bunch of states like California and New Mexico. We filed it with the Center of Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Those guys filed a lawsuit to stop construction in Arizona and California but I was a plaintiff on the ground in New Mexico.

Under the 2005 Real ID act, Congress gave the waiver authority to the director of Homeland Security and the only avenue to challenging the use of the authority was through federal district court which is the lowest level of federal court. Whatever this decision was can only be appealed to the (U.S.) Supreme Court. This law cut out the middle step which is normally the (U.S.) Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court takes on very, very few cases that are submitted to it so we lost the case in District Court which happened to be in D.C, so then what we did was then appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is probably not going to take it.

However, we do have another case that is a lot more promising…with the Sierra Club and the SBCC, which is a coalition of groups that stands for the Southern Border Coalition of Communities. My organization is a part of that coalition. We are challenging the national emergency declaration and the transfer of money from the Department of Defense to build a wall. We actually won in the first step in the 9th District Court of Northern California. It is now being heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and we asked for a stay on construction. The district court issued the stay but the Supreme Court overturned it (the stay). (The merits of the case are still being decided by the Court of Appeals)

What impact does the border wall have on the flow of clean water on the communities?

It is mostly not too much on the quality of the water but more the quantity of the flooding. For example, because the wall is being constructed without any input on environmental issues, they are ignoring things like drainage. What they have done in the past is build these pedestrian fences right across arroyos or streams. We have a lot of arroyos which are dry, clean beds that normally don’t have water but when it rains they can have a lot of water. Now when the border wall cuts through, this can cause flooding and redirects the water in a way that is destructive. That happened in Nogales, Sorona in 2008. That actually was when they plugged up an arroyo which caused a lot of flooding on the other side of the border and led to some death all to stop people from crossing.

More recently in Arizona, they are drilling these shallow groundwater wells in order to get the water they need to mix cement for these concrete footings. These footings are 3 or 4 feet wide and 6 or 8 feet deep. And you know, 500 miles of that, that is a lot of concrete. They are building these wells and pumping out groundwater and using a lot of water, which is going to cause springs to dry up and wetlands to dry up.

What are your thoughts about the future and whether your efforts to protect the environment from construction of the border wall will be successful?

I’m not optimistic that we will be able to stop the border wall under Trump, but long term I think, or I’m hopeful, that we can take down the border wall, which was a ridiculous waste of resources…It is going to be a fight because even people who don’t like the wall may say it is already there, why bother to take it down.

Kevin Bixby (center) and other protesters call for protections for the jaguar population during a protest in New Mexico in 2018. (Photo courtesy of Joseph Yaroch)

There is more awareness of the impacts on wildlife…The pandemic may offer an opportunity to step back and realize our relationship with nature is partly responsible for the coronavirus. The breathtaking quickness that we have been able to shut down the economy and lower carbon emissions. With this horrible cost of the loss of lives and jobs, it does demonstrate how fast we can shift and change. Hopefully people will be willing to do that.

 

Pandemic Sparks Entrepreneurship at the Border: Small Non-Profits Make Protective Gear for Healthcare Workers in Both Juarez and El Paso

At Fab Lab, skeleton crews of two-to-three people produce face masks, working six-hour shifts to maintain social distancing. (Photo courtesy of Fab Lab)

By Aurora Ferrer

Small, non-profit, “makerspaces” in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico are helping to combat the personal protective equipment shortage for medical workers on the border.

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, El Paso-based Fab Lab (short for Fabrication Laboratory), has put its technological resources, including 3D printers, towards making face masks and face shields for front line workers, as well as parts for respirators. An open-source, design-and-manufacturing organization, Fab Lab El Paso is a non-profit that also provides STEM training for students and entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, its sister labs, Fab Lab Juarez and Fab Lab Paso del Norte in Mexico have also started to make protective equipment, using funds recently raised through donations.

Governments in both the United States and Mexico have widely faced criticism over severe shortages of protective equipment in hospitals and other healthcare facilities, which have been shown to place healthcare workers in greater danger of contracting the highly contagious and often deadly virus. According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. has the highest rate of Covid-19 infections in the world, while Mexico has the third-highest rate among Latin American countries.

As of mid-May, the El Paso County Health Department reported 1,234 cases and 82 deaths. The state of Chihuahua in Mexico reported 943 cases and 169 deaths.

The Fab Labs on both sides of the border decided to answer the call for protective equipment before they had received funding. Samuel Badillo, operations director at Fundación Axcel, which runs the Juarez Fab Labs, said, “We just started doing it” and decided to figure out how to pay for it later.

Fab Lab El Paso has struggled to obtain funds from the Payroll Protection Program, a problem plaguing many small American businesses and non-profits. (Photo courtesy of Fab Lab)

With skeleton crews of two-to-three people working short shifts (about six hours) because of social distancing efforts, the organization was able to turn out 3,000 masks in about three weeks.

Fundación Axcel, founded in 2013, provides training, consulting and education for high school students, entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to learn about technology. Through its Fab Labs it also focuses on digital fabrications and rapid prototyping. It is the non-profit arm of the Technology Hub, which according to its website, “is a binational business incubator built to stimulate regional innovation, entrepreneurship, and industry.”

Originally founded in 2014, Fab Lab El Paso recently received a $1,500 grant from the Paso Del Norte Health Foundation (PDNHF) for the protective-equipment project. Additional funding has been provided by United Healthcare, as well as other companies, organizations and individual supporters.

Cathy Chen, executive director of Fab Lab, says the organization has sent protective equipment to as many as 10 clinics in low-income El Paso communities, as well as several senior centers. (Handout photo from Fab Lab)

Cathy Chen, executive director at Fab Lab El Paso said the organization has sent out “hundreds of PPE to Centro de Salud Familiar La Fe, which has 10 clinics in El Paso and serves low-income community needs.” She also notes that United Healthcare and “affiliate senior care centers” have received hundreds of protective devices, as well as sending “1,500 pieces of N100 mask frames and face shields to [nonprofits] in Mexico for community distribution.”

Fab Lab El Paso is also fulfilling daily smaller orders for protective equipment. “All in all, we have sent out almost 3,000 pieces of PPE and are in the process of prototyping custom PPE for specific medical needs, such as dentists and surgeons,” said Chen.

The Mexican organizations have had more success attracting government support than Fab Lab El Paso. In addition to private donations, which included an SLA printer (used for respirator parts,) the Juarez Fab Labs have received some support from their local government.

Meanwhile, Fab Lab El Paso has struggled to obtain funds from the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), a problem that has persisted among many small American businesses and non-profits. “We did qualify for a small advance from the SBA (Small Business Administration) under the Economic Injury and Disaster Loan program,” said Chen, noting that the organization has not yet received a response to its application for a PPP loan.

The El Paso border has been hit especially hard, economically. With the U.S./ Mexico border closed to non-essential travel, and the quarantine shutting down all non-essential businesses, trade between El Paso and Juarez has come to a standstill. According to Workforce Solutions Borderplex, 38,104 unemployment insurance claims were filed on the U.S. side of the border between March 29th and April 30th.

 

The Pandemic Stymies Efforts to Help the Poorest Communities: Local Organizations that Provide Vital Social Supports Are Impeded by Social Distancing

Church volunteers sort donations and put together bags of groceries for Sacred Heart’s food pantry, one of the few in-person programs the church is maintaining during the pandemic. (Photo by the Rev. Stephen Pitts)

By Anacaona Martinez Rodriguez and Amanda Salazar

At the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in El Paso’s “El Segundo” neighborhood, just blocks from the city’s main border crossing to Juarez, Mexico, the Rev. Stephen Pitts worries how parishioners are faring without the many outreach services the church has had to stop, or scale back, under the state’s coronavirus stay-at-home order.

But he is most worried about the emotional toll that the lockdown is having on members.

“These people have survived the violence in Juarez; the fact that they can’t be together now is worse,” Pitts said during a video interview after the state went into lockdown to curb the spread of the virus on April 13. “That’s how they survive everything. I think there’s a lot of loneliness.”

For families at the border who depend on religious institutions and community activities in times of hardship, not being able to congregate and ride out the challenges created by the pandemic together has been particularly difficult, he said.

High school players from El Segundo Barrio Soccer Club compete in El Paso. (Photo courtesy of El Segundo Barrio Soccer Club’s Facebook page)

Organizers of El Segundo Soccer Club, which engages children in league sports and supports the families of its players, also have ceased all games and activities, including plans to take one of its teams to participate in the state championship.

“All of that just canceled right now,” said Juan Adame, one of the coaches of the soccer club, which started in 2011 and has grown to serve about 150 children, ages eight to 18.

“We never thought nine years ago something like this was going to stop all that,” Adame said. “The state tournament is very important for all these kids because it’s been the way that we’ve been kind of selling it to this team, to everybody. ‘If you win state, you’re going to be recognized.’”

Without being able to go to states, he said, the players have lost the possibility of realizing a high-profile win, possibly playing in college and then, just maybe, playing professionally.

Sacred Heart and El Segundo Soccer club serve one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country. According to U.S. Census data from El Segundo’s 79901 zip code, the average annual income of residents is $21,000, with 60 percent of the neighborhood living below the poverty line.

Pitts said a strong sense of community, ingrained in the parish and among most El Pasoans, has meant that people were willing to stay home during the pandemic and self-isolate to protect each other, especially the older or sick members of their neighborhood. But the lockdown has kept them from worship and other services the church offers.

Volunteers from the church’s food pantry distribute groceries. (Photo by the Rev. Stephen Pitts)

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the church also has had to stop most of its outreach programs, which included citizenship and adult-education classes, except for the food pantry, which it continues to run.

Because many parishioners do not have internet connections, Sacred Heart has not been able to reach many people through its virtual services and masses. The church’s messages of hope are not reaching enough people, Pitts said.

Additionally, Efren Loya Gomez, an assistant religious director at the Sacred Heart, said many parishioners have reported having problems with landlords and employers during the pandemic.

“There was a lady that stopped me the other day to help her fill out a money order,” he said. “She told me her landlord told her she has to pay $25 dollars a day every day she was late with her rent. If not, he was going to evict her.”

Gomez said some parishioners were suffering economically because they face job losses and were not eligible for federal stimulus money because they were undocumented.  “With the pandemic, they’re suffering and they’re stressing out,” he said.

A mural depicting the rich history of Sacred Heart Catholic Church adorns side buildings along E. Father Rahm Avenue where many of the parish’s outreach programs are housed. (Photo by Vera Haller)​

El Segundo Soccer Club executive director Simon Chandler, who founded the league after coaching his own son on a community team, said his players also were experiencing anxiety during the pandemic.

“Their fears are very kid-like fears,” he said. “They’re worried about whether they’re going to pass sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, what happens if they don’t do the work, that their computer doesn’t work. They have problems with the software and all that stuff.”

Chandler, who also works as the Community Schools Coordinator in the El Paso public school system, was a school teacher when he started the club, figuring it would be a good way to engage the kids in the low-income neighborhood where he taught and lived.

“As an educator, you’re always finding ways to kind of motivate your kids, to hook them into whatever you are doing and so soccer made perfect sense,” he said.

El Segundo is a predominantly Latino area; Chandler estimated that 90 percent or more of the people living in El Paso speak Spanish. Soccer, or fútbol as it is known to much of the world, is one of the most popular sports in Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

The soccer club has multiple teams for kids of all ages. The club also offers services for the members of the players’ families.

While their child or sibling is at practice, relatives can participate in one of the soccer club’s English language courses or citizenship classes. Those programs also have been cancelled due to the coronavirus and stay-at-home order.

Adame, whose younger brother Marcos, 18, has been playing with the Segundo soccer club since it began, said the club plays an important role in the players’ development.

Students from El Segundo Barrio Soccer Club, on their way to compete in last year’s state championships, pose on an Austin street. This year’s championship was cancelled due to the pandemic. (Photo courtesy of El Segundo Barrio Soccer Club’s Facebook page)

“It exposes the kids here to the outside world, not just in this community,” Adame said. “Even just taking them out to play on the East side of the city, just to take them [to] play every weekend, that’s sort of something big because a lot of parents don’t have a car here.”

Soccer was the way that the club drew the kids in, but it was never the ultimate goal.

“I’m thinking if there’s another word other than ‘family,’ but I can’t think of one,” Adame said. “That’s what it is. I arrived in this community at about 10 years old.  My mind is here, my heart is here. Now with this club, it’s my passion.”