January 2025

The Encuentro Project welcomed 23 groups in 2024.

Annual Mass at the Rio Grande

Parishioners at the 2024 border mass.

Last November 9, 2024, the annual bi-national border Mass was held on a platform in the Rio Grande Canal between El Paso and Juarez. Worshippers were by the river banks on both sides. It brought together communities from Juarez, El Paso, and Las Cruces, New Mexico to pray for the migrants who have lost their lives attempting to migrate into U.S. at the southern border, and to pray for the needs and safety of migrants.

The Border Mass was concelebrated by the Most Reverend Jose Guadalupe Torres Campos, Bishop of the Diocese of Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua; the Most Reverend Peter Baldacchino, Bishop of the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico; the Most Reverend Bishop Mark J. Seitz, and Auxiliary Bishop Anthony C. Celino of the Diocese of El Paso.

Updates on the Border

by Heidi Cerneka, a Maryknoll Lay Missioner and a lawyer at Las Americas

In the first updated detention stats released in calendar year 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported 39,152 immigrants are currently detained, 60 percent of which have no criminal record, which translates to over 23,000 people who came to the U.S. to ask for protection or support, who faced situations so bad they chose to leave their homes, and were welcomed with handcuffs, shackles, lockdown and separation from loved ones.

I represent people who have suffered violence, poverty, threats, and terrible loss and come to the U.S. to ask for protection. We do not know what will change at our border as the administration changes in the White House. We also can't predict what will happen with state politics here in anti-immigrant Texas. But we know that our job is to defend people so that they have access to justice.

Read the full article in our Newsletter.