Minda standing with leaders from Al Otro Lado and World Relief during a recent trip to the border.
Helping to Reunite Families
and Restore Hope
We have the unbelievable privilege to have been asked to help with case management in the re-unification and resettlement of families seeking asylum who were separated from their children this past year. This is an immense undertaking, and we are partnering with several other agencies to get this done, but we also your help and the help of your networks to successfully reunite and serve all these special families.
You may have already seen some of this in the news the last several weeks, but here's a summary of what's going on. Thousands of families sought asylum this past year at the southern U.S. border, and as a result, parents were separated from their children. The parents were deported back to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, forced to leave their children behind in detention or foster care.
Al Otro Lado, a bi-national organization which provides legal assistance, searched several families down, heard their stories, recognized their claims for legal asylum, got them visas to travel through Mexico, and hosted them in an undisclosed location near Tijuana. Al Otro Lado, with the assistance several other organizations including World Relief and Families Belong Together, brought them to the border to declare asylum, present that they have housing sponsors and home teams, and seek reunification with the children who are somewhere in the U.S.
At this point, we are excited to tell you that after spending an initial period in detention, almost all of these parents were released to hosts in the U.S., and their children have been located and they are in the process of being reunified. And while so much has already been accomplished, there is a long way to go. These families all have strong cases for legal asylum, but nothing is certain. The legal process will run its course, which takes time, but these families will also be needing to effectively integrate their lives in the U.S. We have been asked to help lead that process.
We will be helping establish and train Home Teams for all these families, coach them during the duration of their legal proceedings, and then help them establish themselves in healthy communities as productive citizens. To be honest, if all goes as planned, Home for Refugees has to scale pretty fast to do this.
We can't do this without you. We need you, but most of all these families need you. These people are fleeing persecution and violence and are legally applying for asylum at a US port of entry. We have set up an emergency GoFundMe fund to help support this initiative. We will do all we can to help empower them to re-establish their lives, find new hope, and fully experience the life God intended for them, and we need financial partners to give to make this possible.
We invite you to make a contribution now and tell others to benefit Home for Refugees USA. Thank you for your partnership with us!