'A lot of people care, they just don't know what’s really happening down here'

A Q&A with Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, co-director of the Sidewalk School in Mexico.

Children at the Sidewalk School in Matamoros, Mexico, were asked, “What makes you happy?” This girl’s answers include “joy, love, food, sweets, to play, to draw, to read and to write.” Photos courtesy the Sidewalk School.

In the beginning, six years ago, Felicia Rangel-Samponaro was serving food to asylum seekers on the bridge between Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, Texas. There she met another volunteer, Victor Cavazos. A year later they started the Sidewalk School for the children stranded under the Remain in Mexico policy of the Trump administration.

The Sidewalk School quickly morphed into a rapid-response organization that has worked in migrant encampments in Matamoros and Reynosa, teamed up with a church to build a shelter, and partnered with medical professionals and other NGOs working along the border in the Rio Grande Valley to help asylum seekers.

“We are super flexible,” Felicia said. “Victor and I have learned to move with the laws and policies of the U.S. We move with it every single day. We’ve moved in such a way that at all times we give the services that are needed.”

The Sidewalk School doesn’t receive government funding and relies totally on grants and private donations. 

Here are excerpts of my interview with Felicia, edited for length and clarity. We covered a lot of ground in an hour, and there is so much more we could have talked about. (We spoke by phone the week before President Biden’s June 3 order to further restrict asylum, a policy which will leave more migrants stranded and vulnerable in Mexico).

I decided to break down Felicia’s comments and observations by topic. Her perspectives, and that of others working on the border every day, are essential for our understanding of the harsh realities facing thousands of men, women and especially children. You could skim the different segments, but I encourage you to read everything she had to say.

Trauma-informed education

First of all, children can't sit through eight hours of school. No, this child has been through some traumatic things. There is no way you're going to have their attention for four hours. But second of all, if you come into the class crying and upset, one of the staff members will take you aside to ask what is going on. If you can't tell the staff member they then give you crayons and paper. Draw it out.

We used to have a “feelings tree” — you can pick a leaf that told what your feelings are. Or if you couldn't pick a leaf, draw it, write it, cry it out and then we can come back to you if you want to talk about it. Or if you just want to go back to your parents you can, and then when you come back again, we can see if we can get this emotion out of what happened to you.

You're going to be met with a lot of children who have been kidnapped, assaulted or have watched their parents be assaulted. They can't verbally, most of the time, get that out to you. So then you have to go about these different ways of getting it out. Now once we get it out, we actually partner with therapists, counselors for children. So if you can get it out to me or to one of the teachers, I can then turn around and offer therapy sessions not only to you, but also to your parents.

On top of the therapy sessions, we also have the clinics and the doctors. If you've been hurt then you can now see a doctor and they can then see if they can somehow help you — medications, or if it's a serious injury, we can take you to the hospital. We're not like a typical school. It’s a holistic approach we take with our students and that’s how we've been able to last so long.

Racism 

We brought free wifi to asylum seekers because they were told they had to use (the CBP One) application. We then started monitoring the bridges in Matamoros and Reynosa to see how this application works. That's when we found the racism and discrimination in the CBP One app. We were screaming it out to the mountaintops — if you're brown and Black, it was not accepting you. They couldn't get their pictures taken.  

Let's say you have a darker skin tone. You still have to go outside in the sun. You can't be inside. It won't accept your picture. The Kaleo shelter, which is the Sidewalk School’s, is the only black shelter in the entire region. All of our residents are Black. A lot of people were not aware that at one point it was 99% Black asylum seekers in Reynosa. It was nothing but Black people out there. Then if you look on the bridge (to be allowed into the U.S.), you're seeing Russians and others with fair skin tones and you aren't seeing Black people.

Success

We have success stories. I tell people all the time, if you're living in the Kaleo shelter, you're safe, you're eating, you have free wifi. Our clinic and our school are built into Kaleo. So I tell people all the time we have success constantly. Medical care, we give out free medications as prescribed by the Sidewalk School volunteer doctors. Success. If you're taking your meds, success. We just served water on the Hidalgo bridge to the asylum seekers who've been out there for two days. Success. I mean, the Sidewalk School is nothing but success stories. Constantly, every minute, every second of every day.

A child shows off a Valentine’s Day card he made at the Sidewalk School.

Sadness

Our job is full of sadness and trauma. We are met with trauma constantly because people are stuck in Mexico. Yes, we do have some sad stories about children and their parents. This is one of the stories Victor and I don't speak about usually because it affects us a lot — a child who had cancer came here from her home country with her mother and father. They were coming to the U.S. to get her adequate medical care that they couldn't receive in their home country and were not receiving in Mexico. They needed to be in the U.S. The little girl was hospitalized in Matamoros. They were approved to enter legally on a Monday. She passed away on Sunday morning. The parents were told they still could cross into the U.S., but mom and dad said, “Why would we come now?” And they went back to their home country. 

Empathy 

I had asked Felicia, “What can we do to make elected officials and everyone else in the U.S. care about these children?”

My answer is not a hopeful answer. I do think a lot of people care, they just don't know what’s really happening down here and that’s the problem. The other issue is the false narrative that is being fed to Americans by our own media. I think a lot of people don't want to know the truth of what is happening here at the border. If I’m telling you something different, and you’ve been bombarded with this false narrative constantly, why would you believe me?

‘How dare they!’

Immigration is such a hot button issue in our country. I’m showing you exactly what is happening on the ground — concertina wire, people who are stuck on the other side of the fence, and the barriers we’ve put up, and they’re left there for days suffering with no access to clean water or food. 

On New Year’s Eve, there were two children with special needs and a woman giving birth on the river bank, and Border Patrol was standing and watching. This is a country our government says you cannot go to because its “too dangerous,” but we will leave thousands of people there as they wait to legally enter the U.S. The family of the child with cancer, if this mother and father had taken their daughter on the Thursday before she passed away that Sunday, and swam the river, we would have blamed her parents for coming over from Mexico to watch their child die. Not only that, this is the state of Texas. Our governor would have arrested them, saying, “They broke the law, how dare they?” This is what happens all the time. Swimming the river, you just don't know what’s going with that family. How dare you blame them and criminalize them and lock them up for caring and loving their child enough to do that. 

‘Illegals’ 

People scream about “illegals” coming to the country, and they don’t understand what the word “illegal” means. If you have entered the country through a CBP One appointment, that is legal, why are you calling them “illegal?” They did what the U.S. government asked them to do. If you swam the river, turned yourself over to Border Patrol, which is what 99 percent of that population does, they take you and process you at a Port of Entry and release you into the U.S. You are legally here, you have a court date, you are still legally in this country. 

White supremacy 

People should be aware that during one of our presidents’ administrations, when he shut down the border completely, he was allowing people to fly into the U.S., people from what he called “good countries.” He didn’t stop everybody. He only stopped brown and Black people. 

It’s really white supremacy. White asylum seekers also EWI (Enter Without Inspection). Why is no one screaming about flying them back? There was a flight to Haiti not even a week ago. There’s a war going on in that country, yet the U.S. government was OK to fly them back there. Well then, you should be OK flying Ukrainians back (to Ukraine). Let’s make it OK to fly people back to all the countries that have a war going on. Most Americans don't think about it in those terms. You’re criminalizing the people who don’t have the resources, usually minorities. The people who do have the resources are White asylum seekers. And the CBP One application is a great example of that. 

‘What has she done to you?’

The last thing I want to mention is the state of Texas targeting NGOs along the border is very disappointing. I love Texas, I was born and raised there, it’s very hard to see my own state mislabeling what the Sidewalk School does. I’ve been reading the statements about the NGOs in Texas. We’re all being mislabeled, it’s really sad that my own state will mislabel what we’re doing. What the state is trying to do, at least for the Sidewalk School, is criminalize someone trying to bring education to children. Is that a crime, to bring education to a 5-year-old, to a 10-year-old little girl? What has she done to you?

Hope

If Victor and I didn't think there is hope, we couldn’t keep going. Of course we are hopeful and all of this changes, we hope asylum seekers make it over safely after fleeing their home countries for very good reason. We are hopeful for all of that. When asylum seekers come to speak to us, they are hopeful. We can help. Which one of those do they need? Shelter, medical help or education, or all three? All of that is hope, and we keep going.