Supporting deported immigrants

In many cases deported immigrants come to the United States because they want to meet with their families again. Those immigrants that don’t have don’t have documents travel to the United States hoping that deportation will never become a reality. Deportation is a nightmare for those immigrants because once you get deported there is a huge chance that you won’t be able to come back. “Some will try to cross the border again. Others, however, see deportation as an opportunity to return to their homeland, especially during the holiday season.” However, the United Methodist Church’s Joint Commission Project on Border Issues in San Diego opening a program to aid those deported immigrants who chose to return to where they were living in the origin in Mexico. People that represent the Church in San Diego are working with their Baja California counterparts to give the immigrants a “Hope Pack,” which provides “basic products for the trip back, such as food (five granola or breakfast bars), four pints of water or juice, a pair of new underwear, a new t-shirt and personal hygiene products (soap and toothpaste).” The United Methodist Church has three temporary shelters in Tijuana that delivers the Hope Packs to the immigrants. In addition, “the majority of boarders at the Methodist Church shelters in Tijuana are men who have no family or friends in the area.” These men have chosen to leave everything they had to find a better future. These Hope Packs were needed to those immigrants that have been deported because the Rev. Luis Garcia of First United Methodist Church in Chula Vista says “Talking to immigrants at the shelters, we noticed that many times when they needed the most help it was with how to return to their home towns.” People that have been in the shelter find that looking for jobs is hard because they don’t have permanent address or most of them have lost their official documents. In fact, the church is planning to spread the programs to the cities of Mezicali and San Luis Rico Colorado, Sonora. Garcia adds, the Church offers them aid in all kinds of way, such as physical, emotional, and spiritual. Immigrants that have been deported seem to have no hope and the people in the church give them the word God, which gives them hope to their lives. Garcia says, that the Methodist Church have always supported the immigrants that have been deported and that is what being Christian means. It’s important to support those that are less fortunate. “One of the goals of the program is to help immigrants in their home states to get jobs, continue their studies or start their own small businesses.”


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