Interfaith Group Seeks to Help Immigrants

ALTAR, Sonora (By Michael Clancy, Arizona Republic) August 26, 2004 - This small desert city has become, in five short years, the last oasis for thousands of immigrants crossing the desert from western Mexico into Arizona.

An interfaith group of 30 people, mostly Catholics and Jews, traveled to Altar on Monday to observe the conditions there, and to find the human faces behind the contentious issues of the border.

Bishop Gerald Kicanas, leader of the Catholic Diocese of Tucson, asked the group to ponder "how to respond in new, creative ways" to the suffering of thousands of immigrants making their way to the United States.

Hundreds of immigrants arrive daily in Altar, said Erica Dahl-Berdine, Mexico coordinator for the national Catholic Relief Services. In the fall and spring, the number can climb to 1,500 people a day arriving in a city the size of Safford.

All of them, Dahl-Berdine said, are fleeing extreme poverty in hopes of finding something better for themselves and their families.

They risk death to find a better life.

"There is a constant flow," said the Rev. Robert Carney, a Tucson priest. "They are looking for the easiest place to cross, but there is no easy place."

Mayor Francisco Garcia said the influx started six years ago, when a Border Patrol crackdown in and around Douglas drove immigrants farther west.

He said immigrants now are responsible for 75 percent of the economic activity in Altar, as evidenced by shops and carts selling water, canned food and backpacks.

The economic boost comes with costs in sanitation, water supplies and garbage collection, Garcia said.

The Rev. Rene Castaneda, 33, parish priest in Altar, said that when he arrived in 1999, immigrants filled the small plaza in front of Our Lady of Guadalupe church every day.

"They are not coming to Altar on vacation," he said.

Charged by his archbishop with serving immigrants as well as permanent residents of Altar, he set out to convert the hearts of his congregation.

"All day long, buses arrive full of migrants," he said.

Every day they come, unloading their passengers in Altar, where they can buy passage on one of hundreds of vans to the border.

Castaneda said he told his congregation not to be as worried about their building and plaza as they were about how people of God were being treated.

"Now the migrants are evangelizing us," he said. "They show us the true face of Christ."

In 2000, Castaneda opened a ministry center where he and a group of volunteers feed and shelter new immigrants.

They have assisted more than 12,000 people, he said.

Ten to 20 people a day walk through the doors, looking for a meal, a shower, medical care or a place to sleep for a night or two.

Rabbi Robert Kravitz of Scottsdale, making his first trip to Altar, said the bunkhouses reminded him of photos from the World War II Nazi camps of Auschwitz or Dachau.

The boarding house holds up to 80 people at a time. They pay $2.50 to $4 a night for a roof over their heads. It is one of hundreds of such residences in Altar, Castaneda said.

The immigrants are getting ready to pay as much as $2,000 for the last 35 miles to the border, including a van trip to Sasabe and a guide across the border.

Coming up with a response can be tough, said the Rev. Jan-Olav Flaaten, director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council.

"To see what people will endure to get basic needs," he said, "it's overwhelming."

The biggest job is to bring the story home in a way that effectively conveys the emotions felt by the visitors, Flaaten said.