After being turned away at the Canadian border, Juliana, then nine months’ pregnant, and nine family members from South America ended up on the streets of Bellingham in August.

Hoping for asylum from a violent situation, the families — three siblings who are natives of Colombia, their spouses and their four children, now ages 4-10 — had been headed from Ecuador to Canada, where a relative could help them get a new start.

It took 10 months to make the dangerous journey, mostly on foot, to the U.S.-Mexico border. The families decided to cross without permission so they could more quickly get medical attention for the children, who weren’t feeling well, according to one of the fathers, Jesús.

Last March, they crossed the river into Texas, carrying the children on their shoulders and backs, he said. Once in the U.S., immigration officials gave them dates for asylum hearings and cell phones to keep track of their locations.

A charity gave them plane tickets to New York, where the children received medical care; later, the families unsuccessfully tried to cross into Canada. Changing course, they traveled to Seattle and made their way to the border at Blaine, where they were refused entry into Canada.

Eventually they ended up in Bellingham. “We saw it, we liked it, so here we are,” Jesús said.

They had nowhere to go, but local residents — including a Spanish-speaking professor — organizations and a team from Catholic Community Services of Western Washington stepped in to help.

By October, the families were in temporary housing, the children were in school, everyone had food and clothing, the men were doing some work and the families were being connected with medical and other resources. In early November, they were receiving legal assistance to apply for asylum.

And a healthy baby boy, Kaleth, was born to Juliana and her husband Jason on Sept. 2 at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center.

Help from new community health workers

The CCS staff helping the families includes Jose Ortiz, the agency’s Latino regional network builder, and community health workers Andres Parra Conde and Griselda Mendoza Vargas. To meet the families’ needs, they are partnering with North Sound Accountable Community of Health, the Whatcom County Health Department, PeaceHealth and the state Employment Security Department.

Parra Conde and Mendoza Vargas, who speak English and Spanish, are newly based at Villa Santa Fe, a Catholic Housing Services apartment building in Bellingham for agricultural workers and their families.

As part of the Catholic Healthcare Collaboration (see box below), the community health workers are assisting populations “that have great inequity in health care access,” said Will Rice, agency director of CCS’s Northwest Region. “We weren’t aiming to work outside of Villa Santa Fe, but this (situation) kind of presented itself.”

Griselda Mendoza Vargas and Andres Parra Conde are community health workers for Catholic Community Services, part of the Catholic Healthcare Collaboration launched in 2022. (Photo: Stephen Brashear)

Parra Conde, a Bellingham resident, immigrated from Colombia 24 years ago. He has been helping the asylum-seeking families with housing, legal and other needs.

Before becoming a community health worker, Parra Conde said, he worked in business and industry, which put money in his pocket at the end of the day but left him feeling empty.

“The difference now (is) I feel like I do something when I help somebody,” Parra Conde said. “This is my recompense. It makes me feel happy. The most important thing is to help somebody.”

Mendoza Vargas, a mother of four young boys who lives in Mount Vernon, came with her family to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in 2005 when she was 8.

She helped connect Juliana with a pediatrician and get clothing, diapers and wipes for her newborn. She also took family members to the CCS Farmworker Center in Mount Vernon, where they got clothing from the emergency clothing closet managed by Sacred Heart Parish in La Conner, with volunteers from the Skagit Valley Catholic Churches. They have also been helped by CCS’s Hope House, located at Church of the Assumption Parish in Bellingham, which provides clothing, household goods and personal care items.

Knowing the difficulty of navigating health care and community resources, Mendoza Vargas is excited to be a community health worker. “It makes me feel really happy that I can help all these people, whether it’s something little or it’s something big,” she said. “I’m hoping I can make a change in their lives.”

Seeking a better life, more opportunities

A better life for their children and more opportunities for education and work are among the reasons the six adults — all but one in their 20s — decided to make the journey toward the U.S. and Canada.

The siblings from Colombia had already experienced violence and tragedy in their extended family. The youngest sibling, Michelle, told their story in Spanish, with Mendoza Vargas interpreting: Several years ago, they left Colombia with their mother and took refuge in neighboring Ecuador after “las guerillas” killed their aunts, grandfather and other family members to get the family’s land.

They applied for asylum, but “in Ecuador, we lived with the fear because we didn’t really have (legal) status; we couldn’t work or go to school,” she said.

With their asylum case at a dead end and unable to return to Colombia for safety reasons, they decided to seek something better. Leaving Ecuador, each carried a backpack of food and a bag of clothes, Jesús said.

There were many twists and turns in their journey, Jesús and Michelle explained: They faced the hazards of the jungle, mafias demanding payment for passage, kidnapping, fake guides who took their money, police corruption and overcrowded immigration jail cells in Mexico.

But there were also people who showed kindness — giving them rides, maps or short-term shelter in areas designated for migrants. “A lot of people’s help is kind of what brought us here,” Jesús said.

Finally making it into the U.S. “was the best thing that happened to us,” Michelle said with a big smile. Getting rest and not being scared or traumatized “was a relief.”

Although Juliana said she gets “flashbacks of everything that we’ve been going through … health-wise, I feel good, better than before.”

The families have asylum hearings in the coming months, but they can see a future filled with possibilities for them and their children.

“I decided to come over here so that new opportunities would open up for my (4-year-old) daughter,” Jesús said. Michelle, who is 20, couldn’t attend university in Ecuador, so she wants to study to become a professor or lawyer. Jesús, originally from Venezuela, is an electrician with HVAC skills and would like to start his own company, as well as open a beauty school or salon with Michelle.

For now, they appreciate being safe, receiving help and living in a place where their children can thrive.

“The kids are in school, they’re studying, they’re calm, there’s no danger,” Jesús said. “Everything’s good.”

 Northwest Catholic - December 2023/January 2024