San Ysidro, California — On the U.S. side of the border between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, there is a section in between double fencing that is used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection as a makeshift holding facility to process migrants who cross into the U.S. illegally.
It’s here that Bri Stensrud of Colorado Springs recently brought a group of 15 women to the border for the first time to meet with some of those migrants. Stensrud is director of Women of Welcome, a nonprofit migrant aid group made up of evangelical women from across the U.S. who are attempting to help asylum seekers, something they say is a Biblical calling.
“The Bible doesn’t say anything about U.S. immigration policy,” Stensrud told CBS News. “But it does have a heck of a lot to say about God’s heart for the immigrant.”
Stensrud describes herself as an abortion-rights opponent and staunch conservative. But she says one particular experience clouded her views on immigration.
“Visiting an unaccompanied migrant shelter, I met two young girls, 11 and 13, who were mothers, and that was shocking to me because I had a young daughter at home, and no child chooses to be a mother at that age,” Stensrud said. “So I immediately realized what America is being told was not the full story.”
She says the story the U.S. is being told is that “those who are coming to the border all have nefarious reasons for coming. They are the worst of the worst of every country. And that’s not what I saw.”
White evangelical Christians helped deliver President Trump his November victory, and a campaign that was built on his promise to stem illegal immigration. He won the support of about eight in 10 voters in that voting bloc, which represented about a quarter of the total electorate, according to CBS News exit poll data.
“I think any time a more conservative evangelical engages in the issues of immigrants and immigration as a whole, you do feel like you’re in a very lonely spot,” Stensrud said.
That prompted Stensrud to create a space that’s a little less lonely for other conservative women. And her group gives them a firsthand experience of the realities at the border.
On this particular day, the Women of Welcome brought by Stensrud met with migrants from Mexico and Turkey who were being held in the makeshift processing area, providing them with snacks, water and information on what would happen next.
Stensrud also took her group across the border into Tijuana to visit a migrant shelter.
“What we’re asking these women to do is to go over and sit with another person, and to care about where they came from and why they came,” Stensrud said. “And we’re going to say, ‘You matter.’ And that’s powerful.”
She adds, “Why are we forcing a family to wait on a dirt trash pile and use a dirty porta potty and get fed a granola bar a day, when I know we can do better?”
