Posted on 07/08/2014 3:28:26 PM PDT by robowombat
'Army of Christians' Ready to Help Migrant Children
By Heather Sells CBN News Reporter Tuesday, July 08, 2014
McALLEN, Texas -- Some churches in Texas are frustrated because they want to help the flood of immigrant children that have crossed the border into America this year. But they're still waiting to hear just how the federal government will use them.
Many churches in the Lone Star State, especially those on the border, have known for months about the tidal wave of immigrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Border Patrol agents have already detained more than 50,000 kids this year. Children as young as 6 years old are crossing on their own, spurred on in many cases by parents hoping they can escape chronic violence or poverty or both.
Most of the children come from three countries: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
What will happen to these children in the coming months? CBN News' Heather Sells addressed that issue and more on CBN News Today, July 8.
At the annual meeting of the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas this month, leaders from 1,100 congregations expressed concern for the safety and salvation of these children, as well as frustration over their lack of access.
Although Baptist leaders have worked with the Obama administration for weeks, they've not received any clear guidance as to what role churches will be able to play in ministering to the unaccompanied children.
Gus Reyes, director of the Christian Life Commission for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, says churches are ready to help now.
"We have an army of chaplains," he told CBN News. "We have an army of disaster-relief trained people. We have an army of children's ministers and leaders who have background checks who are ready to come. We have an army of medical physicians and nurses and dentists that are believers who are just ready to give their time."
In the border town of McAllen, Pastor Chad Mason of Calvary Baptist Church works the phones daily trying to find ways to help the immigrant children and fielding calls from churches and individuals that want to help.
He knows first-hand of the need because many Border Patrol agents worship at his church and others in the community.
"They tell us the stories of kids that are in their care who are traumatized by what they've seen or are incredibly impoverished," Mason told CBN News.
"And we wonder, 'How are you dealing with that?' because we know Border Patrol is not designed to be a childcare facility -- they're designed to be police officers," he said.
With the current surge and resulting backlog, Border Patrol agents are detaining kids for as many as 14 days, a condition that human rights activists say is unacceptable.
By law, however, agents cannot quickly return unaccompanied child immigrants from Central America to their home countries. They must screen them as potential trafficking victims or refugees.
That process leaves thousands of kids stranded in Border Patrol stations for days and later in Health and Human Services facilities for possibly months.
"That's what breaks our hearts," Mason said. "We know that there's a need and at this point we have no access to try and care for that need."
Churches in the Rio Grande Valley are cooperating to minister to adult immigrants and their children who have crossed the border.
After Border Patrol agents initially detain them they release the families at bus stations in border towns like McAllen and Brownsville. With their deportation hearings months away, they are free to go until their hearing date.
At that point, these immigrants are usually in need of food, clothing, and sometimes medical care after perilous journeys from their home countries to the border.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, leads the effort.
"We don't forsee this ending anytime very soon," she said.
This week, the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) has begun a campaign to work with Latin American churches to warn parents not to send their children to the United States.
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez is president of NHCLC/Conela, which represents more than 40,000 Hispanic evangelical churches in the United States and 500,000 worldwide.
He warned unaccompanied children here could fall victim to the same drug gangs that threaten them in Central America.
In the meantime, Texas churches are standing by, ready to help those who have come and will come.
"In the future we'll have to figure out what's right and wrong and those kinds of things," Reyes said. "But biblically we're going to love people right now."
These purported Christians are soft-headed in their thinking. Get in your cars, pick up your beloved alien illegal invaders and drive them back to their screwed-up countries and families who abandoned them. These people are at best misguided and thinking through messed-up emotions.
I invite every Caucasian on the planet to join us in our fine country during this period of lawlessness. We will do our very best to provide each of you with a Bible and Rifle upon arrival.
No, it's an old game...corporate welfare. The Chamber doesn't care about oppressive regulations and taxes, they just want free stuff. That's why they support both parties.
I've been around the dance floor with them on that.
Good old collective salvation. Fooling Christians into thinking they’re saving everybody when they’re actually bringing damnation down on us all.
CBN News...so Pat Robertson must be in favor of this.
Not surprised...he did say God doesn’t have a problem with transgenderism.
It's a money-laundering operation.
I remember when the Irving city council debated funding for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, all the speakers were hispanics talking about the great work it did and how they used the money to support small hispanic-owned businesses. Then the members of the council one by one praised the HCC and said they would support the funds. They all pandered to the hispanics - it was sickening.
Finally it was the Mayors (also a council member here) turn and she waited until last on purpose. She talked about going to Fort Worth, it has a big and vibrant Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and it receives zero tax dollars. Why does this much smaller organization need tax dollars?
She made some really good points and said she would oppose the funding, even though it was already going to pass almost unanimously (all others voted for it).
Irving’s mayor - Beth Van Duyne - has real principles.
devout?
lol.
These groups have sold their souls for 40 pieces of federal silver. The children need to be DEPORTED and united with their maladroit parents.
On Greta a reporter just said there was a church meeting it Riverside last night
was this Ed and Ann...
These invaders fear their own oligarch more than they fear our oligarch. You want to help? Send them back to their home and send the aid to them on their own homeland. Carl Sandburg said it well......”Good fences make good neighbors”. The US cannot take hundreds of millions of people to raise. These people need to stand on their own hind legs.
If you want to 'help the children', go to THEIR country to do it, you foolish tools.
On Greta a reporter just said there was a church meeting it Riverside last night
was this Ed and Ann...
Yes, it sounds like what that clueless pair were talking about.
It did sound like it was their church group
:)
and hey Riverside has sound nice houses...
just about nice enough for fussy spoiled illegal aliens..
hey theyre refugees ya does suppose they can live in a plain bungalow ..
I told one of my wife's AAUW chums who was denouncing ‘closing the border’ as ‘mean and Un-American’ that if she wanted to live in a turd world country she should move there and that i wanted to live in my country under our laws and customs.
The preacher in charge of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans is just unable to contain his Christian love for all these invaders and has been slobbering on the media about the obligation of ‘true Christians’ to take these wayfaring pilgrims in and provide them with the best.
False. I sometimes attend churches in the South Tucson area, where many of these illegals live. They are attended so much less than predominantly white Catholic churches. In some areas, there isn’t a church around for quite a bit. They are not wanted.
Maybe these Central Americans will turn to Protestantism, after being in these homes.
I say, by the looks of these “Youtes”, I’d hide the girls and young boys.
Can’t they be auctioned off to the highest bidder?
The bible warns of cultural destruction when mixing with those who share a different culture. If Christians mix with a non christian culture than they destroy there own. Same applies for any aspect of culture or civilization. God warned his people not to mix with those who worshiped a different God. They did and God punished them.
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