An Aztec-area couple is gathering donations of warm clothes, blankets and basic toiletries for refugees along the U.S.-Mexico border. Susan Workman and Jim Gage will make their third trip to Las Cruces, New Mexico, at the end of October to deliver the contributions, along with handmade bears and dolls.
“Those donations make this possible. They’re our lifeline,” Workman said.
Workman first became involved earlier this year after she saw a call online for stuffed animals to be sent to the border. After sending donations for a few months, the couple made their first visit in May to three shelters and a processing center in Las Cruces.
Within an hour, they had handed out donations to over 200 children, Gage said. “Everything had been taken from them. No one had given them anything,” he said. “It tears your heart.”
The couple coordinate their donations and border visits through a Las Cruces-based nurse, Freida Adams, who lived and worked in Venezuela for 20 years. Adams most recently worked with the New Mexico state health department from 2014 to 2018 before leaving to become a volunteer medic coordinator working with border shelters and processing centers.
“The situation is still very real,” Adams said. “It’s kind of dying in the news but it’s just as active as it has been.”
In July, the Trump administration issued a ruling that stripped asylum eligibility from refugees who had passed through another country deemed “safe” before entering the U.S. Since the policy reversal, Las Cruces, which serves as an over-flow city from El Paso, Texas, has seen a decrease in refugees, Adams said.
“It’s not big numbers but we do still receive people,” she said. But a court ruling challenging the Trump administration’s decision could reverse the swing, she cautioned.
Adams said she is now focusing on building a network between shelters in Juarez and resources in the U.S.
Adams delivered two boxes of donated dolls and bears last week to Juarez, Mexico, where she estimates 1,400 asylum seekers are camped out at the end of the bridge separating the two countries. “That doll is the first thing I can do to help them to have hope again,” she said.
Workman and Gage said their efforts have spread organically through word-of-mouth and social media. They have even received donations from Georgia. “It has really mushroomed,” Gage said.
After meeting the couple, Alexis Saghie, a Durango resident, has planned her own visit to Las Cruces in mid-October. “Often we realize what’s going on in the rest of the world with refugees, but we don’t realize that it’s right in our backyard,” she said.
Saghie, a graduate student in humanitarian health from Johns Hopkins, said more people would donate if they knew how and where their contributions were going. “As Americans, we have a lot more than most people,” she said.
As winter approaches, Workman and Gage are collecting size-small winter coats, blankets and winter hats. Donations from the Durango area can be dropped off at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Crazy Horse Salon and Kaiut Yoga Durango until Oct. 25.
“To me, it’s not charity. It’s justice,” Workman said.
lweber@durangoherald.com