Welcoming Asylum Seekers at the Texas-Mexico Border
By Anna Haas, published January 17, 2025
For the past 3 and a half years, I’ve been working at a clinic/ birth center in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) on the Texas- Mexico border. Through this organization, Holy Family Services, we run a part-time clinic at the Catholic Charities Respite Center, which is a temporary shelter for newly arriving immigrants from many countries.
In 2018, my co-worker Annie, also a certified nurse-midwife, began volunteering at the shelter in her free time in partnership with Dr. Griffin, who was operating the shelter clinic through University of Texas (UTRGV). Seeing the need for perinatal care in this population, they were able to secure funding through Every Mother Counts for Annie to continue the services on a regular basis. I joined her in 2022, and we have been able to help thousands of pregnant people as well as parents with newborns. Our services primarily include basic prenatal and postnatal care, transfer to the hospital when needed, breastfeeding support, provision of medications, vitamins, and clean clothes. In collaboration with Migrant Clinicans Network, we are able to connect people with healthcare providers at their destination, which is across the whole U.S.
I have had the privilege of meeting some of the most wonderful, resilient, hard-working people. I meet people mostly from Central /South America and the Caribbean (Haiti, D.R., and Cuba), but I’ve also met people from as far as Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, and Russia. I hear stories about their months of travel in unimaginable circumstances, while pregnant and many times with small children and/or newly postpartum. The patients I see tell me of the great sense of relief they feel to have made it to this point, as many do not survive the journey, though there is a simultaneous sadness for having had to leave their home and family, for the traumas experienced before and during their journey, and the knowledge that navigating life in a new country will bring its own challenges.
I have been greatly inspired by these people and by the work of these organizations that are connecting people to the resources that they need. I have been able to see the good in humanity and the love that bridges people across cultures, religions, and languages. I feel honored to be a part of this work. I hope, despite ever-changing government administrations, that I will be able to continue this work for years to come, whether in Texas or elsewhere.
Update on 02/19/25
On January 21st, I was happy, greatly relieved, to see 3 pregnant patients at the clinic, 2 from Venezuela and 1 from Brazil. All of them were at the shelter alone, as their husbands were all deported at the border (and one patient’s step-father and 9 year old sister as well). I saw another pregnant patient from Brazil on the 24th with her husband (which is rare to see as CBP usually deports the father/husband), and one more who came alone from the Democratic Republic of Congo on the 31st. The last pregnant patient I saw was on February 5th. She came from Bolivia with her 10 year old child and her husband who was deported at the border. Since then, the border has been completely closed, with the shelters having little to no people, and the shelter where I work having zero. It pains me to know that there are moms and babies that I could be caring for, who are likely dying because they cannot access adequate care.
I have many medications, prenatal vitamins, clothes, and toys for kids that I don’t want to go to waste. I am working with the birth center to see how we can continue helping this population locally here in the RGV, and I am looking to work on the Mexico side now, in Reynosa (which is close to where I live) with my friends from Refugee Health Alliance. The conditions are only getting more dire with more crowded spaces and no sanitary or safe living conditions. The pregnant/postpartum people as well everyone else including babies and children, have limited or no access to healthcare, and kidnappings and tortures such as sexual assault and rape are common, leading to severe physical and mental trauma, and sometimes death.
If you would like to help my efforts, all the organizations that I wrote about are linked below. If you send me a check or supplies for my patients- literally anything for pregnant/ postpartum/ babies/ kids, you can mail it to me:
Holy Family Services
Attn: Anna Haas
5819 N FM 88
Weslaco, TX. 78599
You can also send your tax-deductible gift directly to Holy Family, with a memo that it is for Anna Haas, and please let me know if you do, so I can make sure I get the funds and use 100% of them to help these families. Thank you for reading. May we all do for one person what we wish we could do for everyone.
Links:
Refugee Health Alliance: https://www.refugeehealthalliance.org/
Birth Center: https://www.holyfamilybirthcenter.com/
Respite Center: https://catholiccharitiesrgv.org/
Every Mother Counts: https://everymothercounts.org/
Articles from MCN about Annie & Anna’s work: https://www.migrantclinician.org/blog/2023/may/anna-and-annie-nurse-midwives-greet-pregnant-asylum-seekers-empathy-and-care.html
