For more than 25 years, El Paso’s Annunciation House has been a home for the poorest of God’s children seeking refuge.
Fr. Bill Morton interview with Ruben Garcia

"Ruben Garcia is the founder and executive director of the Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas. Since 1978, Annunciation House has provided hospitality at the U.S.-Mexico border to migrants, the undocumented, refugees, asylum seekers, and battered women and their children. Its guests have arrived from El Paso and across the border in Ciudad Juárez, and as far away as Peru, Liberia, China and Iran.

More than 80,000 tired, weary, frightened, and often rejected brothers and sisters have found a clean bed, shower, hot meal, and, most of all, a warm welcome from those serving Annunciation House. Many of the more than 500 volunteers who have come to the border to provide this hospitality have found themselves transformed by the experience, and some have even returned to serve a second or third year.

This March, Annunciation House will celebrate its 27th anniversary of keeping the door open and the lights on for the poorest of the poor in our midst.

Q. What is your background, and how did you came to be involved in this work?

I was born and raised here at the border, in El Paso, and studied at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, and then did graduate studies in pastoral ministry and religious education at the University of Seattle, both Jesuit schools. I considered staying in the Kansas City area, but just felt that this was where I belonged.

After returning to the border, I was hired by the Diocese of El Paso to direct its Youth and Young Adult Ministry program. We did a lot of training and formation of young adult leaders, so much so that eventually they could run retreats and other programs on their own.

These young people told us, “No one has ever taken us seriously about our faith. No one told us that we had a life of faith and only needed more opportunity to express it. You have given us responsibility.”

That was very powerful for these young adults. They began to imagine, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was something available to us that we could sink our teeth into with greater depth?”

So we got this group of 10 or 15 young adult ministers to meet together once a week to reflect on questions like, “How do you live life with credibility and depth and purpose?”

The second floor of Annunciation House, a building owned by the diocese, became available. Now it was no longer a matter of simply reflecting.

Part of what led up to this was the visit by Mother Teresa. We had invited her to be with us to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976 and address over 5,000 youth of the diocese. Later a few of us had dinner with her and Bishop Sidney Metzger, and the bishop said Mass for her in his private chapel.

He was deeply, deeply touched that Mother Teresa would come down here to his diocese. I think that was part of why he responded as he did when we asked to use the second floor of Annunciation House. “Whatever it is you’re doing, I’m not going to get in the way. You can use the second floor.”

Five of us moved in there, and that is how Annunciation House started.

Q. Recently you said, “Whatever impedes a human being’s right to look for bread is sinful, is immoral, and in this sense, the border is a sin.” Can you say more about what you mean by that?

When I said it I meant it to be taken at face value, not symbolically. The right of people to earn their daily bread is a right that does not come to us by virtue of the political or governmental structure. It is a right among others that is inherent in the nature of what it is to be a human being created in God’s image.

Volunteer Kathy Reutyak works with children at Casa Peregrina, a shelter for battered women and their children in Juárez, one of four homes run by the Annunciation House.

St. Paul’s command, however, is double-edged. When we prevent people from being able to work or when we limit their ability to work to options that leave them devoid of the kind of income that gives them access to what is basic for themselves and their family, then you have moral issues that are involved.

These are issues that belong to all of us. They are not just issues of the government of Mexico or the United States. They are all of our issues.

Q. What are some unique problems for migrants crossing the border today?

By design, border security was increased in those areas where it was easiest to cross, forcing people into more difficult areas of crossing, like the desert, where you had 270 people die this past summer alone.

As security goes up, it makes migrating riskier and more expensive and creates more opportunities for predators. As more guns are added to the equation, more guns will be acquired to respond. Violence increases.

The coyote (human trafficker) who in the past would never have thought of traveling with a gun, now travels with a gun. He’s not just worried about getting caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, but getting killed by predators, in more remote areas, who steal his human cargo and then try to extract ransom from the unfortunate victims’ families.

You increase the number of people who are employing coyotes, the expense of migrating increases, and now crossing the border is a much more expensive and dangerous proposition.

Q. Given that many migrants are crossing the border to do jobs that we Americans appear to be unwilling to do, why not make it easier and safer for these workers to come and go?

Historically, we have precedent for that. During World War II, you had 16 million able-bodied citizens serving overseas, and a critical labor shortage at home.

President Roosevelt worked out a plan with Mexico to allow its workers to safely and legally enter the United States to work in farming and construction, get paid a just wage, return to Mexico when there work was completed, and come back again the following year. It was called the “Bracero Program,” and it worked successfully from 1940 until 1963.

So making the border more open now would simply be a matter of using what’s already in place in terms of NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement), visas, etc., but expanding it with greater speed with a goal of eventually making it possible for people to move back and forth in the same way that we figured out a way to allow imports, financial resources, technology, etc. to move back and forth.

Q. What is your perception of the Catholic Church, as an institution, in its response to the border situation and immigrants, in general?

Historically, the Church has been very involved with resettlement of various refugee groups, such as the Cubans and the Vietnamese. The Church as an institution has also been involved, and invested many resources in providing legal representation in the area of immigration as well as lobbying for legislation and programs that benefit the immigrant community.

But where the Church seems to have difficulty is in responding directly to the undocumented people who are physically in the country. In “Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope,” the bishops assert (in this document) the right of all people, of all migrants to mobility for self sustenance, the right to go wherever you need to go to provide for yourself and your family.

At the same time, on a diocesan level, you have some ordinaries sending out letters telling all Catholic entities within the diocese that they may not hire undocumented people. That seems to be a contradiction.

In the face of undocumented people throughout the country, the Church, institutionally, should be at the forefront of offering hospitality. Obviously the Church didn’t bring them into the country, but the fact is they are in the country; they are a vulnerable population that is directly related to what the bishops are teaching in “Strangers No Longer.”

The Church should consider sanctuary for the poor who are about earning their daily bread. The Church should be a witness before the political structure of the country that says, “This is not right. We’re going to offer these people hospitality, and we’re going to offer them employment. And if you want to prosecute us for this, well, so be it.”

What the Church needs to respond to is the economic dignity of people and to see that issue as sufficiently strong in and of itself to mandate an institutional response.

Q. Can you say something about the volunteers that come here, their motivation, their faith?

Volunteers continue to come, to a certain extent, because they, too, are hungry and looking to be fed. At some level they have come to acknowledge a poverty of spirit in their lives to which they need to respond. They want to know something about themselves that can only be gained by placing themselves among the poor. Many have reflected on how privileged their lives have been and that this privilege demands a certain response.

For others, it is the particular circumstances of the border itself, of people in migration, of refugees, the undocumented that attracts them.

You have volunteers who are looking for an experience that will help them articulate their spirituality. They want to articulate it in a more concrete, objective manner, but they haven’t been able to because so much of their spirituality has been experienced on the level of reflection.

What they’re looking for is the flesh for that spirituality. I would say for 70, 80 percent of the volunteers, their faith is very much a factor in coming down.

Q. How do you support the work of Annunciation House?

From the very beginning, we relied on the providence of God and spontaneous donations. And to this day, that still ends up being the vast majority of our sustenance.

Because we basically have an all-volunteer staff, we’ve managed to keep a fairly low overhead, given the size of the work we do.

Volunteers, then, have to be very committed. For the first year, you pay your own way down here, and there is no stipend. If you stay for a second year, there is a $125-a-month stipend. For a third year, it’s the minimum you must earn to remain vested in Social Security, which is about $300 a month. If you go into a fourth year, it goes up to $325 a month and so on.

Q. What else do you want to tell Columban Mission readers?

The most important thing to me is to have churches, faith and international communities give serious thought to opening houses of hospitality as a concrete response to the needs of immigrants, refugees and, especially, the undocumented in our midst.