The Encuentro Project has welcomed 6 groups from June to December, 2025
The Situation on the Border
El Paso's Fort Bliss is the largest immigration detention facility in the United States. The detention center on the U.S. Army post began receiving the first 1,000 detainees on August 1st, 2025. The goal is to detain up to 5,000 migrants. It’s known as "Camp East Montana,"
It was reported Migrants held at “Camp East Montana” are suffering physical abuses, unsafe living conditions. In November, a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Tom Lyons was sent alerting them of the said conditions by US Rep. V. Escobar together with organizations- ACLU of New Mexico, the ACLU of Texas, Estrella del Paso, Human Rights Watch, Las Americas, Immigrant Advocacy Center, the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center and the Texas Civil Rights Project.
St Joseph Academy on Encuentro
Why Come to the Borderland?
by Heidi CernekaWhy come to El Paso to learn about immigration, meet migrants and those who work with them, and learn about border policy, if almost no one is able to enter the US and ask for protection? You can see from the comments of the groups who have come in the last year that the value of being here, of seeing the wall separating us and wildlife from our neighbors, of speaking with migrants, those who defend them and work with them, and even those who have worked in enforcement profoundly expands one's understanding of the reality. Many people say they have heard so many different stories they wanted to learn firsthand.
In El Paso, we work with people, human beings, often vulnerable or carrying trauma from their countries of origen, who came to seek protection in the country they held up as a nation that respects law, justice and human rights. They waited, sometimes a year, in Mexico in order to follow the current rules of the CBPOne app that required an appointment to enter and ask for asylum. They prepared an application for protection, explaining what happened to them, collecting evidence, believing they would have their day in court before a judge to explain their fears the persecution they suffered. They followed the rules. But our country did not.
Current practices by the US government allow them to remove people to random third countries, as long as the US has made a ($$) deal with the country. They allow the government to interrupt people's asylum processes with the immigration court, detain them and then deport them. They allow the government to arrest and criminally prosecute anyone who comes and tries to enter and ask for asylum. They allow the government to detain people indefinitely because it is no longer possible to request a bond and apply for asylum outside of detention.
All of this is disturbing, because the intent has nothing to do with protection, with human rights, with human beings. The U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, for the first time in twelve years, made a formal public statement in response to the current situation.
We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.
Read the full article in our newsletter.