What an open door to asylum seekers looks like
A Laredo pastor and his family are hard at work helping others, on both sides of the border.
In the spring of 2019, Lorenzo Ortiz was the pastor of Iglesia Bautista Emanuel in Laredo, Texas, a city on the border with Mexico. While there have always been migrants in Laredo, and Ortiz had worked with migrants in one way or another since 2017, he now noticed a sudden escalation in people from Central America crossing the US border into Laredo seeking asylum, the largest numbers seen since 2006. Feeling the desperation of their need, Ortiz began to invite them to stay at the church.
Before long, Ortiz’s daughter, Ruth, tells me, their numbers had swelled into the hundreds. There were people sleeping behind the altar and under the pews. There were Central Americans, Africans, Haitians, Brazilians, and Cubans. When people in the church objected to having the church completely taken over, Ortiz invited the asylum seekers to his home. This was the beginning of El Buen Samaritano Migrante, an ad hoc, ever evolving ministry that has now ventured into the dangerous, cartel-ridden territory on the Mexican side of the border.
All through the hot summer of 2019, the Ortiz family hosted as many as 140 migrants at a time from all parts of the globe in their modest home. They set up tents and cots in the yard and every inch of the house. They had a small medical station, and they helped people make calls to relatives and buy bus tickets. Eventually, they chartered buses and sent one bus in the direction of California and another in the direction of New York, dropping people off at destinations all along the way.
