 Good morning, Buenos dias, everybody. If you have not been to some PJs or see them home, you should go one day and visit the place. I was talking to someone the other day, and I refer some PJs as the healtone of the shelters. So it is a beautiful facility, and they do so much for these kids. So yeah, my name is Antonio Fernandez. I work at Catholic Childs here in San Antonio. I have been blessed because I work at different Catholic Childs through the United States. And what we do is in Antonio, it's a reflection of what the Catholic Church does through Catholic Childs, and entities like some PJs and see them home. One of the biggest stigmas that I have to defend every day about Catholic Childs is that we serve everybody, regardless of, are you from the United States? Are you undocumented? Are you documented? Are you Catholic? Are you a Muslim? And that says a lot about who we are, because we are universal. Catholic Childs here in San Antonio is the only entity in San Antonio that is authorized by the government to bring refugees to the city. So we have a contract to bring between 800 to 1,000 refugees every year. Mostly they are this year, they are from Ghana. They are from Congo, Nepal, even Cuba. We provide them with services, employment services, which is in English. We do as much as we can so they can be self-sufficient within six months, which is a lot to say, expecting I'm thinking that some of these people never spoke English before they got here. And I mean that about the religion thing, because I'm not going to talk to you about the statistics, because you have great speakers before, and they give you a lot of numbers and history. But I'm going to tell you my first experience here in San Antonio, which was a Lackland base. Almost two months ago, I think a little more than that, I went to Lackland base to meet the kids, Archbishop Gustavo went and sent me as to the kids, and I was blessed an honor to be with him there. It was a great experience, but you know it was sad. It was sad to see kids walking in straight lines with their hands in their backs, that they've been able to touch each other, I'm sorry. And we have met three times because we have 200 kids there. We couldn't give them communion. I'm sorry, we couldn't do the handshake for the peace because they couldn't touch each other. So we actually started doing maps on a weekly basis, and after the first time, they actually allowed them to touch each other, the hands to do the peace sign. But it was a great experience that day. What I'm talking about the Catholic Church serving everybody, that day I was asked by the president of Baptist Church and Family Services, are you actually offering him? It's like, what can we do for you? What Catholic Church can do for these kids? And I was told nothing. The government is paying for everything. So at the end, actually, they said, you know what? We need Bibles and New Testament in Spanish for these kids. So we start collecting them. And I was accused on several occasions of trying to convert kids to the Catholic Church, which was not my intent whatsoever. But Black Land Base was a great experience. We since then have tried to do many, many things within San Antonio to help these kids. Once, the biggest one has been we organized a donation drive for them. Since when we have collected over 100,000 piece of clothing, we collected almost $90,000, tons, thousands of little toiletries, shoes, toys, New Testament Bibles. All of that has been given to different entities. St. Piges has received Bibles and New Testaments. Everything else, more or less, is paid by the government. So I think we've seen a home, which is a very similar location as St. Piges, but mostly focused to teenage mothers, and their children, and babies. We also help Black Land Base when it was open. We have helped Rio Grande. And you saw the numbers about Rio Grande and Laredo. Rio Grande and Laredo was a different type of shelter. Catholic Charities, on those two locations, partnered with the Archdiocese and created small shelters, temporary shelters. So whenever the border patrol agents were picking up the kids in the border and they stayed taking to the Laredos, they were taking them to Catholic Charities. And it was a great experience. They got thousands, not thousands, hundreds of valiantiers from Catholic Charities through United States to go on valiantare for two weeks or more. People from San Antonio were dropping close to Catholic Charities here. We had a pick-up truck and then a youth help truck just to give them the donations, because it became amazing. So the donations that people in San Antonio were giving us, we actually were added to the donations that people from Chicago were giving to us and North Carolina. And it just became a larger issue than just San Antonio. Since then, the minus have decreased. You saw the numbers. Laredo still is accepting close from Catholic Charities. So we're still giving them as much as they need. Rio Grande has asked us to stop. They don't need any more. Lackland is close. But last week, on Thursday, I had the opportunity to see the new Detention Center for Families, for Mothers and Children at Carnant City. It's very, very sad. You hear the numbers. I'm going to give you two small stories from these people. A quick number is that the facility is 100% full. They have 532 people, 228 mothers and the rest are children. The sad thing is that it's a profit business. It's not like some peaches or CRS or raíces who are not here to make money, who are here to help people. This new facility is a profit business. And I think everybody should understand that. And the same way, when you go to some peaches, and I really mean that, it's a beautiful location. When you go to this place, it's a jail. They used to have adults in that location. So you go to the jail, they open the door for you. Before you open the next door, they lock the door before. You have to go through metal detectors, and so on, so on. And what they have right now is mothers and children. And I wonder, how much risk are these mothers and these children to the United States? I don't think too much, but maybe some people may be fear. Very sad thing about that location. James spoke about every single child goes through therapy at some p.s. within 24 hours. There's 532 people in this detention center. And call it a detention center, call it a jail, whatever you wanna call it. To me, it's just a jail painted in yellow. There's only one therapy for 532 people. And I ask, how many therapies you have? Just one. I'm just trying to be difficult, I'm sorry, but it's like, oh, is that enough? Yes it is, we don't have any problems. You know, the stories that you heard today are true. I have drama in my house every day, and it's a one-thousand of what these people go through, one of a million. How many of us need therapy because something tiny? So let me just give you two different examples. A middle woman, Silev Guatemala, because her husband had been killed by the gangs. They got his body in different parts and sent the body to her. She was able to get the man who killed the husband and put him in jail. Nine months later, he was out, nine months. When he got out, he was able to kidnap her son and told her, unless you pay me X amount of money, I will kill him and send the body parts to you, and then I will kill you. So this woman was able to get the money, get the son, and get to the United States. There's two common, I spoke Thursday, I think I spent the whole day, maybe like nine, 10 hours at three centers, some peaches, sitting at home, and kind of sitting. And I think all of the stories about one was because people were afraid for their lives. There was only one person who I spoke that she came because she wanted to have a better life. But the people at this place, they are scared to death. The fact that they only have one therapist says a lot about that facility in my mind. You have your own opinions. Something that we spoke before about the beast, the train, every single woman that I spoke to, at the two facilities that I spent a lot of time talking to women, they say that all of them took the buses. Some of them spoke, we took a train once, but now everything happens in bus, which I was very surprised. In current city, so two things were interesting to me. One was that everybody has a phone, they have the right to make a phone call for three minutes to their countries. And if you cannot make it, then too bad, they will not allow them to do them. I don't know that's legal or not, but that's what they were telling me. And I think the saddest thing for me, besides all the horrible stories that I heard, was how every person at the site had to have an ID. But at the back of the ID have a barcode. To what point we start treating people like human beings, and we start treating people like objects or numbers. It says a lot, I think. Otherwise, the facility I had to be at is with you, but they had everything that we had to. They have a cafeteria, they have the rooms, they have a small school, they have the clinic, they have a place to cut their hair. But it's a jail. I mean, who wants to spend time in the jail? So our business to the site have been very touchy, very powerful, and we have been able to use the stories to talk to other people. And Catholic Church has been trying to get contracts from different places within the United States to actually save more people. We tried to apply, and we actually did apply to get a shelter. I wanted to have a home for these people. And it was one of these, I think Jonathan spoke before about you were able to get like host a family of mother and a child for free. I mean, you will have to pay for everything. The government would not pay you a single penny. So I was able to actually get a convent, donate to Catholic charities. I was able to get donors to get Catholic charities, hundreds of thousands of dollars, to open a small home in the east side of the city for mother and children. When I called back Washington DC, because they had requested that early June, when I called back, and this was late July, because it took a while to find money and location and so on, they told me the government doesn't want to do this anymore. They think the best thing for mother and children are to be in the detention centers, not out there in homes, because they're afraid they're going to flee. But they told me, well, if you still want to do it, we can put you on a wedding list, and you actually will be the first facility in San Antonio in Texas to have just one hosting families for mothers and children. And I said, great, we'll do it, that's my duty, that's my obligation. But they told me, well, we forgot to tell you, if you do this, you're gonna have to put an ankle bracelet in every single mother and every single child. So I mean, I'm talking to people in Washington DC, and I just wasn't sure if it's my accent, my English, or what was that? But I said, are you telling me that I need to put a bracelet in a baby or in a toddler? And I said, yes, every single person living in the house will have to have a bracelet. So it was hard for me to say yes, I said fine, we'll talk about this, but put us in the list and we'll see what happens after that. And I've been trying to talk to people and make with a congressman and assure me that if we get the shelter, he will do his best to actually ensure that we don't have to have the bracelet. Because when I do research about the bracelet, the bracelet has to be charging less than one meter, like two feet from the wall. So how can you have someone for like two hours, just like this? It doesn't make any sense to me, but that's what we were told. So with that, we have different grants, we apply many, many people. And I just, the past thing about this has been cooperation with people. I mean, Raisa's is working with Caritas Leader Services that we have in Catholic Charities, who are working with St. Mary's University and Tamengla and I becoming really good friends just because of this. Then we're helping some peaches, we're helping seed on home. There's so many entities just working together to get these kids' lives better and the mothers and everybody. But also, you know, people outside San Antonio. I was able to meet with Josefina Balquet-Mota, run for president of Mexico years ago. She's really committed to help kids now. She's not running for politics anymore, so maybe that's a good thing. And she wants to help the dreamers and she wants to help an accompany miners. You know, I was lucky enough that 10 days ago, I made with Carlos Slim, the wealthiest man in the world. Well, everybody, you got the money, so it was. Well, he actually has given a Catholic entity that we're part of, $650,000 grant to actually provide services to dreamers. Now that's focused in Arizona, as in California, but we are working to bring the money back to San Antonio as well. Because this is not just the Cubans. This is not just the people from Guatemala and Salvador and so on. It's everybody. But with Catholic Charities, we have had thousands of calls of people asking us, what can we do to help? You know, so besides everything I mentioned to you, we also were asking for volunteers. The problem that we have when we go to, we went to children Baptist family services, they say, Antonio, we don't need more volunteers because they go and pay for everything. When I went to Khan City, they're telling me we don't need volunteers because they go and pay for everything. We were able to get a program for people over 55 years of age. And they actually are funding us just to pay people who are volunteers, you know, insurance, food, and mileage. Then through Caritas Legal Services, we are helping racists to actually go out there to the facilities and actually help them with that as well. I think the most important thing that we're doing is called, we got a contract called Safe Passages. And it's just whenever these kids are released to foster care, when they are in those wonderful homes with their people, we'll be able to actually do the follow-up services with them and ensure they go to the doctor and ensure they go to the lawyer and have the appointments. But it takes a village to do this. So this is not just Catholic Charities or Races or Samarit or St. Pigeons. It's all of us doing this together. It's very, very sad. But we're gonna keep trying, helping them. And we know, well actually I don't even know how many people are coming or not. Because I hear 60,000 this year, 90,000 this year, 90,000, 8,000, 96,000, every week the whole thing changes. It's like the Pope, they're unexpected. You know, we don't know what's gonna happen. But I mean, one thing I think I can tell you is that many of us are prepared for next year. And we're gonna get prepared and we're gonna get even stronger. So thank you so much for everything you guys do.