 I'm here with Jonathan Ryan, who is the Executive Director of RAISES, which is an organization that was formed to help refugees in South Texas and who has been providing legal assistance to refugees who are many of these women and children who have been coming from Central America. Jonathan, what's going on here today and how did this come about? We have for a little over a year now been running a shelter here in San Antonio that receives the women and children who are released from the carns and the dilly family detention centers that are managed by Immigration Customs Enforcement, their for-profit facilities run by companies but then managed by immigration. In the last couple days, that's right, in the last three days following a federal court decision that struck against the state of Texas and told the state of Texas that it could not change its rules to permit these for-profit prisons to apply for child care licenses. Ever since Saturday morning, we have seen ICE releasing large numbers of women and children. They've released them to our shelter, which ran out of space. We were very, very graciously hosted here where we stand at the Mennonite Church in San Antonio. The Mennonite community has been part of our work at RAISES since our founding and before. In many respects, this is a full circle experience. What the judge on Friday said was that despite their attempts to apply to gain licenses as if they were child care facilities, the state of Texas is unable to change its own state rules solely so that these prisons can get those licenses. What the state of Texas was trying to do was also license them as child care facilities but have some enormous exceptions, which would have these children be in the same place as adults who were unrelated and also as other children who were not related to them, which normal Texas child care licensors would prevent. There's a laundry list of requirements that the federal government requires of any custodial setting for a child and there's also a laundry list of violations, of acts that have been performed by these companies. We expect that people will continue to be released. Over this weekend, we had more than 500 people released and we slept. We provided housing, food, medicine, we had doctors here on site, transportation to the airport for all of these people. And based on our observations over the past two years, we also know that our immigration customs enforcement agency is incapable, is incompetent, and ill-equipped to house mothers and children. It's not what they do. They shouldn't try. And so most of, if not a vast majority of the women and children who arrive here do have family contacts, someone with whom they can live. They are not dependent on our government to provide any housing. We received over 200 women and very young tender-aged children last night in the rain, in the cold, in the streets, in a strange location. If our immigration authorities claim that they exist to protect our communities, how can they explain putting women and children in such danger, having volunteers waiting until three o'clock in the morning in the streets, in the rain, that is in no way protective of anyone's security. But what we know is that the time that they spend here is a time when they receive support, when they do not have to worry about their own safety or that of their children. And that's a great blessing for us. We accept fresh fruit. We accept food that is ready to eat, hot pizza, for example. We do not normally accept canned goods or dried food. We prefer that individuals donate money. One thing that we really pride ourselves on is that the food that we provide here is fresh, it is local, it is Central American cooking. It is, in many cases, the first time that many of these families, many of these children will have tasted a meal that is in any way familiar or comfortable to them. So we prefer that individuals who are able to donate money do so, and the food items that we do accept directly are fresh fruit. The food in the for-profit immigration detention centers is not just unfamiliar to these people. It is disgusting, it is rancid, it is inedible. I'm here with Jenny Hickson. And Jenny, tell me what your role is. So I am a member of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, and I also work for RAISIS as the community outreach coordinator, which means I oversee CASA. And by CASA you mean the house that is near the Mennonite church where we're standing, and that is the house that has received many of the women and children, refugees, asylum-seeking moms and kids over the past couple of years, right? And we have seen a 350% increase in the number of people that we're seeing at CASA since January. And that's before this past weekend, right? That is before this past weekend, yes. And we have received as many people this past weekend as we received in the first four months of this year. And a reminder, I mean, they are fleeing horrific violence, the murder capital of the world, and in extraordinary poverty, and in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Right. And made an enormous journey to get here. Yes, they have made enormous journeys, knowing that the whole way it was going to be pretty miserable for them. And so I think it speaks to both the character of the people who come here and the things that they are fleeing, that they choose to make that journey, and that they are here with us. And they are lovely, lovely people, because this would not work if they were not. We have moms who are sweeping, we have moms who are cleaning, we have moms who watch each other's kids. If people were not cooperative, this whole system would fall right apart. So I think this is a situation where you see so many people together acting in cooperation in a way that I don't think we always appreciate. Yes, they were brought here by Carnes and Dilly. All of the majority of these people were from Dilly, and they were brought here by ICE as part of our normal protocol. However, they brought us almost 10 times more than they normally bring us. The first email was late Friday night, and we were getting emails all day Saturday. And we were continuing to receive people until 2.30 in the morning on Saturday. We received 55 people at 2.30 in the morning on Saturday. The other thing that has been strange about this particular weekend is that normally the people who come to us have most of their travel arrangements made. So our average stay across is a day and a half. And so that means that most people come and they stay one night because they already have their bus or their plane tickets arranged. Last night of the 200 and something people that we had here, only 10 people had their travel arrangements finalized. Which means that the vast majority of these people, we are having to get them in contact with their family. We're having to do basically the job that ICE is being paid to do as part of their case management program here. Because ICE is not doing the part of their job that they're supposed to do, which is making sure that people have travel arrangements completed before they release them. The majority of people that come through CASA are connecting with their family members. Some are connecting with friends. But most people are going to family elsewhere in the United States. We've had a bunch of community members, some from the Interfaith Welcome Coalition, who have generously donated prepaid phones. And so that's helped us out a lot. And those phones are so that people can call their family members. Exactly. And they need quite a bit of assistance with that. Most of their families don't know how to buy tickets. I think what we need from the community right now to be quite honest is that we need money so that we can buy the things that we know we need. Last night we spent $1,700 on buying beds and sheets and all the things that we need to get here. We're taking people to the hospital, we're going to have to pay for those bills, all those sorts of things. People have been very generous with food. We have lots of clothing now. But we need the funds to support this. We do need volunteers, specifically Spanish-speaking volunteers. We need two types of volunteers, volunteers who are willing to clean, because as you can imagine, having this many people in this space, this many children in this space, we need lots of people to help us keep the space clean for everyone. And we need volunteers who speak Spanish who can help troubleshoot those travel arrangements, who can do all of the sort of assistance that we need to make sure that people need and they need to be able to speak Spanish fluently to do that. We do need prepay phones, prepay phones that have, we've had some people donate them that had unlimited minutes for one month. Those are perfect and wonderful and that allows us to do a lot and make sure that our families get to connect with each other. We need toiletries, we need some of those items for sure. I think some of the things that we need are things to entertain the kids here. People have crayons, people have coloring books, no toys with batteries or that make noise. Because en masse, that's pretty rough to deal with. But if they have things that can keep the kids occupied, that again, unfortunately, you wouldn't be able to use paint, please no glitter. But those sorts of things would be really, really useful. The kids are here and frankly, they're bored. This is not a space that's meant to be used by this many children. I'm here with John Garland, who is the pastor of the Mennonite Church. And John, you have given over your entire church to 400, 500 people last night. Tell me how you feel about that. Well, we're Mennonites and Mennonites are one of the Anabaptist groups. Any other Christian we believe that this is not our church, it's God's church. And the church is the family of God and the church is the body of Christ in this world. And the buildings are a gift and it's nothing more than that. It's a gift and when God gives us gifts, we have to use them. And Jesus told parables about this and He also gave direct teachings about this. If you're given a gift, you have to use it. So I would say we're grateful first and we also feel honored as a church that we get to be a part of it and be the vessel. And as the pastor saying, yes, you can use our building is one obvious, of course. And two is just an enormous privilege, you know, that someone would be like, hey, here's this amazing gift. Can we use it? And of course, the answer is yes. They went and were privileged to say, yes, we want to help these people and reminded also when Jesus says, when you serve these folks, the least of these, when you serve these people who are thirsty and they're hungry, you're also serving me. So as we're preparing for Advent, yeah, it's a great privilege. This little guy who you're holding, his mom got here, arrived here so sick that she was immediately hospitalized and he has been held and loved and is being carried around by you and is being taken care of. Yeah, he's just a precious child. And at no point since he's been here has he not been held or taken care of by someone. And that's one of those things where you're like, well, only by the grace of God, because we're in a room full of people who have nothing next to nothing and have nothing to give except their own love. And they say to this child, like, you will not be abandoned, right? You will not also haven't slept very much. So get a little emotional, right? Because the bus loads just kind of come and come and come. And they also come at the worst hours, like really, so it's easy to get a little emotional. But yeah, this precious child, I mean, the people here say, you know, we're going to hold you. We're going to take care of you, even though we don't really have anything else to give except that assurance and that presence, yeah. The good news, though, is that we found his father and contacted him and he's planning to get here as soon as he can. And his mother is recovering in the hospital.