Ajo Samaritans Newsletter - Winter 2021

Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Ajo Samaritans e-newletter. Do not worry we are not going to bombard your inbox with updates or requests for money – although should anything you read in the newsletter inspire you to make a donation we would be most appreciative. This occasional newsletter will help us to include you in our community, share our stories, and build connections between people of conscience who are committed to humanitarian aid at the US southern and northern borders and everywhere in between.

CELEBRATIONS and CHALLENGES for a New Year in 2021
We celebrate the immediate changes that the Biden Administration has taken by executive action to end some of the most inhumane and damaging polices of the previous administration. The American Immigration Law Association has a great resource for understanding these changes in detail https://www.aila.org/advo-media/issues/all/first-100-days#changes

More than this we celebrate the strength and resilience of people who have been forced to wait in Mexico to have their asylum claims heard or to be reunited with their families. We honor the courage of people who have chosen not to remain at the border, but to return to their home countries even in the face of personal, political, economic or climate violence perpetrated against them.

We recognize the fortitude of long time US residents who have been separated from their families through deportation and continue to attempt the journey across the desert even in the face of a monstrous border wall and ever increasing militarization and surveillance.

With our hope for the future comes many challenges.

We continue to balance harm reduction strategies to mitigate unseen dangers such as COVID and seen dangers such as hunger, thirst, lack of shelter and the need for medical care in our support for people at the shelters in Mexico and on their journeys to the US.

We seek to anticipate new areas of need for solidarity such as transportation, access to legal aid and social
support in our community and at communities across the US. We look to heal physical and emotional wounds, exacerbated by four years of division, within ourselves, in our community, across the border and in the desert environment #teardownthewall

Thank you for being with us during this coming year of hope and challenge.