Mennonite Voluntary Service is a program of Mennonite Mission Network. Participants live in community with their peers in units across the country, worship alongside a local host congregation, and join in working toward a more peaceful and just world. Ready to join in? Go to MennoniteMission.net/MVS for more information and to apply. To support this ministry and others like it, click here.
DOUGLAS, ARIZONA, AGUA PRIETA, SONORA, MEXICO — When I first saw the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall, I thought about how ugly it was.
My Mennonite Voluntary Service unit in Tucson, Arizona, was on our annual border delegation trip to the cities of Douglas, Arizona, and Aqua Prieta in Sonora, Mexico, in December 2024. During our trip we were asked to grapple with the questions, “what do borders mean?” and, “what do borders mean as a Christian?”
Our trip was led by Frontera De Cristo, a Presbyterian ministry that works in Douglas, Agua Prieta, and the city of Sonora, in the Mexican state of Sonora. Douglas and Agua Prieta are sister cities, the broad community known as “Dougla Prieta.”
This was the first time I’d been to the Mexico-U.S. border and left the U.S. To start, we began on the U.S. side.
Praying at the border
Douglas residents Jack and Linda Knox led us from their house on a six-block walk to the border to pray for the community and migrants coming to cross. The large, rust-brown border fence loomed in the distance.
We came up to the smaller white fence, double layered with small holes you could hardly put fingers through. And still, people were climbing over.
Across the border in Aqua Prieta, cars drove by. A young man was selling snacks from the median. He stared at us, and I gave him a small wave.
Jack and Linda told us Border Patrol agents reacted differently to their prayer. In the past, some agents purposefully drove fast to kick up dirt on the unpaved road paralleling the Border Wall. Others were polite, and Jack became known to agents as “the man who prays at the wall.”
Next, we visited a local grave with the remains of “unidentified” migrants who died after crossing. Jack specified “unidentified” over “unknown,” because “they’re known by God.”
We noted the number of graves, held a memorial with music, and lit a candle we left at a grave.
Border wall construction began in the 1990s
David, a Frontera De Cristo staff member, drove us up the hills to see the Border Wall. As we went, Jack explained that the Border Wall came into being under President Bill Clinton. Construction hasn’t stopped with changes in president or political party in the White House. The Border Wall sits on the U.S. side.
At a pair of gates added for rainwater in President Donald Trump’s first term, we saw a pillar marking the Mexico and U.S. border, that used to be the only marker.
Trump’s addition, at 30 feet, is currently the tallest. Jack said the wall worked for five days to stop people crossing without inspection. Along the wall, we saw the barbed wire pushed down where people crossed. As we drove by, I spotted a red backpack entangled in the wire.
Jack informed us the Border Wall doesn’t impact just people. Animals, such as jaguars, bees, bats and butterflies are unable to migrate, impacted by the physical barrier or the lights and wind tunnel created by the wall.
Looking back, I realize the fight for justice at the border includes creation care, along with care for neighbors.
Migration is a fact of human life from earliest times
The Dougla Prieta region has seen migration for more than five thousand years, Jack said, and artifacts have been found from Central and South America.
Why people migrate is complicated. Some people come to work in companies that ship supplies from the U.S. to Mexico, such as baby tomatoes, to be hand-picked and placed into containers, then sent back to the U.S.
The wages are cheaper in Mexico than the U.S., but no supplies can leave the facility. Migrants and local workers are allowed to eat rejected food, but can’t take any home. The rejects are sent to dumps, wasted.
The main part of our trip was in Agua Prieta. We stayed in a Presbyterian church that hosted breakfast for us. Across the road, at Café Justo Y Mas, a fair-trade coffee company and coffee shop, we learned about their work to include economic justice in their ministry.
For some people, migration isn’t a choice. As many people told us on our trip, people flee violence, threats of death, war, or economic disasters caused by climate change. Or it maybe they can no longer earn a sustainable living at home, and move for work.
One example we learned of at Café Justo Y Mas was how market deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) harmed local economies. NAFTA caused the price of coffee beans to drop, and some coffee farmers chose to immigrate to the U.S. for work. While U.S. citizens benefited from cheaper prices, marginalized people suffered.
Café Justo works to provide a cooperative business model for coffee farmers. The goal is to provide coffee farmers sustainable wages and an alternative to migrating.
Hardship and joy, intertwined
On one day, we were led on a short walk over uneven terrain to the wall from the “tree of life,” which supplies water for migrants moving towards the U.S. wall.
Seeing the wall from the Mexican side made me feel small, and isolated from my own home country. I wondered if I could make a journey like that, and how I would be treated if I sought refuge in an unfamiliar land.
Later, we met people at a migrant shelter waiting to cross and be granted asylum. After President Trump began his second term, according to NPR, he signed an executive order suspending asylum at the Mexico-U.S. border.
Throughout our trip, we saw many challenges people faced. We also saw incredible joy. At the migrant shelter, children were playing with each other, and we had a chance to eat a meal with the shelter’s guests. Using translation apps and our shared knowledge of Spanish and English, we were able to communicate. I talked with a family and learned of their hopes to locate to the Midwest, where I’m from. I hope they’ll be able to in the future, and perhaps that I can greet them as neighbors.
A justice issue, not a culture war
With President Trump back in the White House, immigration continues to be defined as a culture war issue, instead of a social justice issue.
Building walls, deporting people and blaming immigrants does nothing to fix the systemic issues and sin that shape the world. As Dominique Dubois Gilliard, author and director of racial righteousness and reconciliation in the Evangelical Covenant Church writes in Subversive Witness, “Christians must look at how we benefit from systems of oppression.”
Who picks the food we eat? Who takes low wage jobs? Often, immigrants, dreaming of a better future.
There are many issues that intersect with immigration and the border: militarization, imperialism, economic justice, environmental justice, racism, and apathy towards our neighbors.
Jesus taught us to care for the marginalized, and too often we have turned away from those seeking refuge at the border. As my visit to the border taught me, we can no longer do that if we wish to call ourselves Christians. We must all strive to make immigration a choice, and not people’s only hope. Through programs such as Café Justo’s fair trade and mutual aid, we can build relationships with our neighbors, no matter where they come from, or what country they call home.
So, what do borders mean? At the moment, separation, otherness, and danger. But as Dougla Prieta showed me, they can also simply be the spot where one community meets another.
