The community is invited to hear a first-hand account of the humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold along the U.S. border by Sue-Ann DiVito of Immigrant Rights Action Wednesday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 84 East Oakland Avenue in Doylestown.
DiVito, a local human rights advocate and cofounder and board member of Immigrant Rights Action, recently returned from visiting a variety of border locations in Texas on a solidarity delegation with Witness at the Border in the “Journey for Justice: A Border Pilgrimage.” This was a 2,200-mile border journey by caravan that began in Brownsville, Texas, on Dec. 2 and followed the U.S southern border ending in San Ysidro, California, on Dec. 18 – International Migrant Day. She participated from Brownsville through El Paso.
DiVito had previously visited the border in 2020, but said things have changed dramatically, especially in Mexico where immigrants wait to enter the United States.
Shelters, water purification, portable toilets, and food service that were once available are now gone.
“There’s people that are very hungry and they are dressed for the climate that they came from,” DiVito said.
“[T]hey thought we were reporters and we explained that we weren’t but they begged us to hear their stories and to share their stories,” she added.
One story involved a man DiVito met in the streets of El Paso. He was frantic, she said, because he had just been released from detention and was looking for his wife who had been in a shelter.
“All he had was a dead cell phone because everything else had been stolen from him or taken from him by CBP,” she said.
DiVito and others took the man to Target to buy a phone charger and he was eventually able to make contact with his wife.
With no immediate solution for the border crisis in sight, DiVito remains optimistic and believes that every effort to reduce the ongoing suffering is crucial.
Resources will be available for attendees, including a list of local groups that provide assistance to immigrants in the Bucks County area, contact information for elected officials to petition for immigration policy reform, as well as a list of credible groups at the border that assist migrants and are in need of financial support.
Additional information about the event may be found on Facebook here.
