Heinrich tours El Calvario, Las Cruces church preparing for possible migrant arrivals
LAS CRUCES - A church-based shelter in Las Cruces is making preparations in case it needs to care for migrant families who have crossed the border.
On Wednesday, leaders at El Calvario United Methodist Church on Campo Street welcomed U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich and members of the media to show how the center is preparing in case it receives migrants.
Heinrich, D-N.M., took a tour inside the small church building, which has had its capacity cut due to coronavirus restrictions.
That means the church could need to do things like feed guests in shifts or build an outdoor dining pavilion. Staff plan to have an intake area to perform medical triage and test migrants for COVID-19 upon arrival.
Its pastorium could also shelter families, Freida Adams, an organizer for a coalition helping churches in Las Cruces coordinate the local migrant response, told the Sun-News.
Rev. George Miller, executive director of the El Calvario Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the church has spent about $100,000 to prepare for possible migrant arrivals.
"We're trying to build up the infrastructure," in southern New Mexico to help shelter migrants and refugees, Miller said. "We have a group here that's committed long-term to doing that and so we hope to help, with the senator, to start building that New Mexican infrastructure."
Besides medical care, El Calvario also provides legal advice, clothing, showers, counseling through a social worker, basic English education to children and meals to immigrants who stay. Miller said people typically stay about a day or day and a half.
The senator said he didn't know when migrants could arrive at El Calvario, but that it would depend on the decisions the federal government makes.
"New Mexico has not seen a lot of refugees, but that doesn't mean we won't," Heinrich said. "With the former administration having the 'Remain in Mexico' problem, what they really did is stacked up a whole bunch of refugees on top of each other."
President Joe Biden ended that program, which started under the Trump administration, and the government has begun to process some of those people's asylum cases.
The number of migrants apprehended at the border has increased greatly since Biden took office.
Heinrich told reporters he doesn't believe the increase in migrants comes from people viewing Biden's policies as more lenient, but is rather a result of the Trump administration's immigration policies creating a backlog of asylum cases.
Neither El Calvario nor any other churches in Las Cruces have received migrants since asylum seekers were dropped off in Las Cruces in 2019, according to Adams.
Adams said both El Calvario and Holy Cross Retreat Center in Mesilla Park are ready to receive migrants, but that more shelter space is needed because space is so limited.
The senator said he believes it's a matter of when, not if, New Mexico helps process migrants.
"There are about 26,000 people in total who were pushed back into Mexico by the previous administration," Heinrich said. "The current administration is figuring out how to process those and at some point I could only imagine that we're going to need to do that in New Mexico."
While shelters such as El Calvario have gotten federal reimbursement in the past, Heinrich said $110 million was included in the most recent congressional coronavirus stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan, to support migrant shelters and is a more "proactive" funding mechanism.
