Compassionate Care on the Migrant Trail
Covenant House is immersed in the full arc of the migrant experience, giving compassion, care, and service to youth and young families from throughout the Americas who are displaced from their home countries due to the violence, poverty, and natural disasters that wrack so much of Latin America.
At the start of that arc, we are in origin or “push” countries: Honduras and Guatemala, from which thousands of migrants flee each year and head north to the U.S. southern border. In these origin countries, Covenant House creates safety, hope, and opportunity for youth and families. We help reduce the need so many people feel to flee for their lives from the Northern Triangle.
Our services do not solely impact the youth who live within the walls of Covenant House Latin America shelters. Covenant House is affecting broader social change in the region through the many ways we scale our impact — including public education and prevention programs. We also train police, civil servants, and judicial officers around the rights of the child, how to recognize signs of human trafficking, and how to stop exploitation. We take legal action against perpetrators, abusers, and traffickers — which helps to directly increase the level of safety in these communities. These efforts and actions introduce civilians to a better way of life in their origin countries and can minimize the impulse for forced migration that many young people feel.
Along the migrant trail, we have outreach centers and teams in two key border locations where we care for migrants in transit, recently returned deportees, and residents who are survivors of violence and exploitation in regions made more vulnerable by the inevitable interweaving of migration and trafficking.
Those border cities where we work in Guatemala and Honduras are key crossroads for migrants heading north. Our community presence helps to keep them safe, educating migrants about the risks they may face along the journey and informing them of our services in case they find themselves deported back — which is often the outcome.
In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, near the border with Guatemala, we work directly with the Honduran government’s processing and reception center for recently deported young families with youth and unaccompanied migrant youth. Busloads of deportees arrive at this center from the airport daily after being flown back to Honduras from the U.S. or Mexico. Our team is a loving presence to these traumatized returnees, helping them reintegrate into Honduras. We help meet immediate material needs for food and clothing. We help them find a safe place to live and provide children and youth with school supplies. We offer life skills and entrepreneurial training to support returnees as they seek to build economic stability for themselves. We are their allies and advocates as they pick up the pieces and make their way again in a country that remains dangerous and threatening.
In Coatepeque, Guatemala, our site is located near the Suchiate River, which flows between Mexico and Guatemala, across the migrant trail. By day, the river is used for both commerce and contraband. But by night it is used for migration. It is a place where deportees are formally returned from Mexico and the U.S. The vulnerability of the area and those seeking to migrate makes it a hotbed for human traffickers. Our courageous staff is connected to a network of providers in their region to address issues of human trafficking and sexual violence in supporting survivors. Having multilingual staff is necessary for us to be effective in the country, and at Covenant House Guatemala, staff speak five different Mayan languages in addition to Spanish.
Besides providing direct services, our Coatepeque staff also supports groups of local women who meet monthly to learn about trafficking, how to identify it, and how to report it. The women in these groups become the eyes and ears in their communities, looking out for others in danger of trafficking, exploitation, or sexual violence.
In Mexico City we have a dedicated residence — Casa Albatros — which houses 15 refugee boys, most of them from Central America, who have chosen to seek official refugee status and stay within Mexico. We help them with that paperwork and provide them with a supportive community in which to live. They enjoy the same continuum of holistic care that we provide youth at all our Covenant House shelters.
And even at our sites in the U.S., we have recently welcomed young people who have immigrated from Latin America and were bused to New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. Our open doors help protect them from homelessness, and our staff assists them with the legal challenges of their situation.
While the migrant crisis is a heavily politicized topic in the United States, Covenant House works outside the fray of that debate and stands compassionately along the full arc of the migrant experience, wrapping youth in unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support — regardless of what country a young person is from, in, or headed toward.
