墨西哥华雷斯市-在逃离危地马拉小镇的暴力后，但由于美国持续的庇护限制，他们前往加州亲戚的道路受阻，一个15口之家参加了他们在边境以南的避难所组织的降临烛光仪式。
布恩·撒马利亚诺收容所的小卫理公会教堂兼自助餐厅，晚上的服务与一周的服务不太一样圣诞节他们喜欢在新康塞普西翁举行的庆祝活动。这些活动包括烟花，用刚宰杀的猪做的玉米粉蒸肉，并挨家挨户与家人分享，村民们每天从天主教堂向不同的家庭高举圣母玛利亚的雕像，一路歌唱。
25岁的马龙·克鲁兹(Marlon Cruz)曾在危地马拉种植丝兰和大蕉，她说，“很难把这些传统抛在脑后，但无论如何，它们必须被抛弃。”。“当你挨家挨户听到枪声时，我们会因此被锁在家里。”
成千上万逃离本国暴力和贫困的移民几乎肯定会在拥挤的避难所或墨西哥边境城镇的街道上度过圣诞节，那里的有组织犯罪经常以他们为目标。对于那些生活在户外的人来说，天气尤其寒冷，因为美国大部分地区和边境地区的冬季气温都大幅下降。
拜登政府本周要求最高法院不要在假期周末之前取消疫情时代对寻求庇护者的限制。一家下级法院已经批准了政府的请求，即在12月21日之前撤销被称为第42条的限制。这些限制已经被使用了250多万次，以驱逐非法进入美国的寻求庇护者，并拒绝大多数在边境申请庇护的人。
还不清楚法院什么时候会判决。随着移民人数达到前所未有的水平，美国政府也在考虑一些州提出的保留该措施的请求。在得克萨斯州的埃尔帕索，创纪录的数字要么未被发现，要么在最近几周被逮捕并释放。
作为回应，德克萨斯州国民警卫队本周被部署在市中心的边境，并将呆到圣诞节，一级军士长苏珊娜·林格说，尽管他们将有时间参加牧师提供的服务。
这座城市的避难所已经人满为患，几乎没有时间庆祝，许多移民在零下的天气里露宿街头。
在一个这样的营地，25岁的埃尔帕索居民丹尼尔·摩根本周戴着圣诞老人帽，穿着绿色毛衣，上面有蝴蝶结和小袜子，他希望“能传播笑容”
“这是一个非常复杂的问题，我不是这方面的专家，”摩根说，他向移民们分发了一批大约100块他用山姆会员店的混合饼干烤的糖果。“基督来到这个世界是为了把自己交给我们，对我来说，这就是我来到这个世界的全部原因，是为了把我所拥有的给别人。”
Brian Strassburger牧师是一名耶稣会牧师，他在大约800英里外的德克萨斯州里奥格兰德河谷为边境两侧的移民提供服务，他也看到了这个神圣家庭的旅程和移民的经历之间的相似之处，这些移民和他一起参加了在雷诺萨的Casa del Migrante shelter举行的波萨达庆祝活动，墨西哥。
波萨达雕像在拉丁美洲广受喜爱，它是为了纪念玛丽和约瑟夫在耶稣诞生前被迫从他们的村庄前往伯利恒寻找避难所。
四个女孩带着她们的小雕像在避难所里走来走去，数十名其他移民——其中许多是孕妇，她们的伴侣因为缺乏空间而不得不露宿街头——唱着号召和响应圣歌，讲述一个无家可归的家庭和一个被冷落的孕妇。
“我们差不多每天都在表演波萨达，”斯特拉斯伯格说，他还计划在圣诞节那天在避难所举行弥撒。
即使是来自海地的许多家庭，在那里posadas并不流行，也急切地参与了歌唱和分发由墨西哥天主教修女准备的名为buuelos的油炸小蛋糕。
他们还轮流荡秋千，尽管大约70个孩子最喜欢荡秋千。
“看到一些人放声大笑，这表明了基督带给世界的欢乐，”斯特拉斯伯格说。“有一些解脱，真实的喜悦。他们带着许多焦虑和不确定性。”
来自委内瑞拉的23岁母亲埃迪马尔·瓦莱拉和她2岁的女儿、母亲以及其他亲戚已经在避难所呆了一个多月，她说波萨达让她摆脱了令人不快的等待。
“这很酷，我们都跳舞，我们打开皮亚塔，我们吃可口可乐披萨，”她说。“但来到这里，显然我很难过，因为这不是我想去的地方。”
在埃尔帕索的一个移民和其他无家可归者的庇护所，Loreta Salgado也找到了一些值得高兴的理由，尽管她已经离开她的家人，包括一个儿子和一个孙子，在他们的祖国古巴哈瓦那呆了一年多。
萨尔加多的旅程带她去了11个国家，从巴西到墨西哥。她挨饿，看到一个同伴被蛇咬死，被蒙面人抢劫挟持。答应在她抵达美国时帮助她的古巴朋友已经食言，所以萨尔加多没有钱，也不知道去哪里。
“但我很高兴我在这里，我很自由，我和好人在一起，”她说。
Stuck at the border, migrants find a little Christmas cheer
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- After fleeing violence in their Guatemalan town, but with their way to relatives in California blocked by continuing U.S. asylum restrictions, a family of 15 joined an Advent candlelight ceremony organized by their shelter just south of the border.
The evening service in the Buen Samaritano shelter’s small Methodist church, which doubles as cafeteria, didn’t quite compare with the weekslong Christmas celebrations they had loved in Nueva Concepcion. Those included fireworks, tamales made with freshly slaughtered pig and shared door-to-door with family, and villagers carrying aloft a statue of the Virgin Mary from the Catholic church to different homes each day, singing all the way.
“It’s difficult to leave those traditions behind, but they had to be abandoned at any rate,” said Marlon Cruz, 25, who had been a yucca and plantain farmer in Guatemala. “When you go from house to house and hear shots, because of that we would stay locked up at home.”
Tens of thousands of migrants who fled violence and poverty in their home countries are almost certain to spend Christmas in crowded shelters or on the streets of Mexican border towns, where organized crime routinely targets them. It is especially cold for those living outside since winter temperatures have plunged over much of the U.S. and across the border.
The Biden administration asked the Supreme Court this week not to lift pandemic-era restrictions on asylum-seekers before the holiday weekend. A lower court had already granted the administration’s request to have until December 21 before rolling back the restrictions, known as Title 42. The restrictions have been used more than 2.5 million times to expel asylum-seekers who crossed into the U.S. illegally and to turn away most of those requesting asylum at the border.
It’s not clear when the court will decide. It’s also weighing a group of states’ request to keep the measure in place as migrant arrivals reach unprecedented numbers. In El Paso, Texas, record numbers either crossed undetected or were apprehended and released in recent weeks.
In response, the Texas National Guard was deployed this week at the border in downtown and will stay through Christmas, said First Sergeant Suzanne Ringle, though they’ll have time off to attend services chaplains will provide.
The city’s shelters are already packed beyond capacity, leaving little time for celebrations and many migrants camped out in the streets in below freezing weather.
At one such encampment, El Paso resident Daniel Morgan, 25, showed up this week in a Santa hat and a green sweater featuring bows and little stockings that he hoped “would spread a smile.”
“It’s a really complex issue that I’m no expert at,” Morgan said as he distributed to migrants a batch of about 100 sweets he had baked with Sam’s Club cookie mix. “Christ came to the world to give himself over to us and for me that’s like the whole reason for why I came down, to give out to other people what I have.”
The Rev. Brian Strassburger, a Jesuit priest who ministers to migrants on both sides of the border some 800 miles away in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, also saw parallels between the Holy Family’s journey and the experiences of the migrants who participated with him in a posada celebration at the Casa del Migrante shelter in Reynosa, Mexico.
Much beloved across Latin America, the posada commemorates Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter as they’re forced to travel from their village to Bethlehem before Jesus’s birth.
Four girls carried their statuettes around the shelter and dozens of other migrants – many of them pregnant women whose partners have had to camp in the streets for the lack of space – sang the call and response hymns about being a family with no place to stay and a pregnant woman left out in the cold.
“We kind of enact the posada every day,” said Strassburger, who also plans to celebrate Mass at shelters on Christmas Day.
Even the many families from Haiti, where posadas aren't popular, eagerly participated in the singing and the distribution of the small fried cakes called buñuelos that the Mexican Catholic nuns who run the shelter had prepared.
They also took turns swinging at a piñata, though the roughly 70 children enjoyed that the most.
“To see some bursting out laughing, it speaks to the joy brought to the world by Christ,” Strassburger said. “There was some relief, authentic joy. There’s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty they’re carrying.”
Edimar Valera, a 23-year-old mom from Venezuela who's been at the shelter for more than a month with her 2-year-old daughter as well as her mother and other relatives, said the posada provided a welcome break from a joyless period of waiting.
“It was cool, we all danced, we cracked open the piñata, we ate pizza with Coca Cola,” she said. “But to be here, obviously I'm sad, because it's not where I want to be.”
At a shelter for migrants and other homeless people in El Paso, Loreta Salgado found some reason for rejoicing, too, even though she’s left behind her family, including a son and grandchild, in their native Havana, Cuba, for over a year.
Salgado’s journey took her to eleven countries, from Brazil to Mexico. She went hungry, saw a companion die bitten by a snake, and was robbed and held hostage by masked men. The Cuban friend who had promised to help her on arrival in the United States has gone back on her promise, so Salgado has no money and no idea where to go.
“But I’m happy that I’m here, that I’m free, that I’m with good people,” she said.
