![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Kelly-Ryan-150x150.jpg\")
Kelly Ryan<\/p>\nBy Kelly Ryan<\/p>\n
Editor’s note: Some people quoted in this commentary are identified only by first names to protect their privacy.<\/p>\n
No American city represents \u201cthe border\u201d like El Paso. Its community spirit, civic engagement and pervasive can-do attitude are American to the core. Its history is complex and layered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kelly Ryan<\/p>\n
As born-and-raised El Pasoans know, Spaniards arrived in 1598, well before the founding of New York City. The city was incorporated in 1659, and Franciscans soon established the Mission\u202fNuestra Se\u00f1ora de Guadalupe. The original church still stands \u2013 across the border in what is now Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez. The city was divided in 1850.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Perhaps this intertwined Mexican and U.S. history explains why in El Paso there is a compassion and clarity about border realities at odds with mainstream perceptions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s how the community has always been,\u201d says Manuela, a lifelong El Pasoan who works with me at Jesuit Refugee Service\/USA. \u201cIs it our culture? Our upbringing?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Manuela says she \u201cnever really saw anything bad happen\u201d in the city until a self-identified white nationalist opened fire at Walmart in 2019. \u201cPeople thought, \u2018Why would someone come to El Paso and do that? Why would someone target us?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On my first visit to El Paso as president of JRS\/USA, before the change in administration, I met with as many of the organizations we cooperate with as possible \u2013 federal, city and church officials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I met with Department of Homeland Security representatives and heard their frustration with our immigration system: the punishing workload; the dearth of legal pathways into the U.S., especially given our labor shortage; and the persistent lack of resources. We discussed our shared anguish about how lethal it had become to be a migrant. Like us, they saw the aftermath of traffickers\u2019 extreme tactics \u2013 which routinely included sexual exploitation, starvation and kidnapping.<\/p>\n
JRS has provided legal services and\/or mental health and psychosocial services in courts and shelters around El Paso. I visited as many of these as I could. Nearly everywhere, I found El Pasoans \u2013 including former law enforcement officials \u2013 volunteering or making second careers accompanying and serving migrants.<\/p>\n
Nancy, a retired county parole officer, volunteers full time at the Rescue Mission shelter. In her former career, she wished she could help people in a more active way. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel like a job,\u201d she said about her shelter work. I watched multiple children run up and embrace Nancy as they scampered through the shelter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Sacred Heart shelter, I met Michael DeBruhl, a former Border Patrol chief. After DeBruhl retired, he saw immigration rhetoric shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI started hearing that everyone coming across the border is a criminal,\u201d he recently told USA Today. \u201cWe started separating children from their families. I was really bothered by all these things \u2026 . This wasn\u2019t the America I grew up in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When the streets outside Sacred Heart Church swelled with more than 1,200 male migrants, DeBruhl stepped up, working with the Jesuits at the church to develop a new shelter to meet the growing need.<\/p>\n
We toured the shelter, including the donation center, to which many El Pasoans have given new and used items. DeBruhl observed how the simple act of choosing clean, new clothing helps restore people\u2019s sense of dignity. Later, at Holy Family Shelter, I watched Knights of Columbus serve dinner. They approached this work with a spirit of joy, kindness and hospitality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Today, with the Trump administration\u2019s closed border and mass deportation policies, the shelters are nearly empty. The immigration courts are full of applicants seeking legal pathways. Federal, state and local jails are full of immigrants who have committed no crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coyotes still harm their \u201cclients\u201d and attempt to bring desperate people across the border \u2013 in more remote, perilous places<\/a>. People are still extorted, assaulted and starved. As the quintessential border city, El Paso was \u201csupposed to\u201d be relieved by the disappearance of migrants.<\/p>\n As we all could have predicted, it hasn\u2019t been that simple. Clearly, we need safe, orderly and dignified migration; instead we now have more families divided, U.S. citizen children living without the support of their parents, and persons who need asylum unable to make a claim despite genuine danger at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n