{"id":1,"date":"2022-09-21T14:02:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T14:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/?p=1"},"modified":"2025-05-05T15:08:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T19:08:13","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/2022\/09\/21\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic agencies near Martha\u2019s Vineyard are caring for transported migrants"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Venezuelan migrants stand outside St. Andrew\u2019s Episcopal Church Sept 14 in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha\u2019s Vineyard. (CNS\/Vineyard Gazette via Reuters\/Ray Ewing)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Originally posted on ncronline.org<\/a>
by Brian Fraga<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FALL RIVER, MASS. \u2014 <\/strong>Susan Mazzarella said her Spanish language translator\u2019s eyes filled with tears as the Venezuelan migrants who were flown to Martha\u2019s Vineyard on Sept. 16 recounted the details of how they fled their country in search of a better life in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile leaving Venezuela, they had to go on a boat, and at one point they had to jump off the boat and swim underwater. It was terrifying. They didn\u2019t know what was going to happen to them. They just knew that they needed to try to fight for a better life for themselves,\u201d Mazzarella, the chief executive officer of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River in Massachusetts, told NCR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mazzarella\u2019s team at Catholic Charities is assisting the myriad state social service agencies, immigration attorneys and nonprofit groups that are working to provide legal services, medical care, clothing, food and shelter for the 48 migrants who were flown<\/a> from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha\u2019s Vineyard with no advance warning to the local community. The migrants possessed very little other than the clothes they wore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen they arrived on the Vineyard, it was a warm day, but the nights [on Sept. 16-17] got cooler. Many of them just had shorts and T-shirts on, and that was it,\u201d said Mazzarella, whose agency purchased sweatshirts, sweatpants, hats, and underwear for them. Her team also purchased soccer balls, games and toys for eight children in the group, ages 2 to 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were there to provide humanitarian support and any basic needs and resources that these individuals and families might need,\u201d Mazzarella said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is believed to be considering a run for president in 2024, took credit for arranging the migrants to be flown in two chartered airplanes to Martha\u2019s Vineyard. In doing so, DeSantis followed the lead of other Republican governors in Texas and Arizona who this year have been transporting migrants on buses<\/a> to Democrat-led cities such as New York, Chicago, Sacramento and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis kind of thing has been going on for months now,\u201d Tania Guerrero, an immigration attorney with Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc., told NCR. She described disorientation and chaos that she said the governors\u2019 controversial busing tactic has created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult as an individual to be told that you\u2019re going to one place, and you end up in another and you have no reliable network of people there,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what the lay of the land is. And so there is danger, there is uncertainty, there\u2019s a lot that\u2019s going on all at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bishop Edgar da Cunha of Fall River, whose diocese encompasses Martha\u2019s Vineyard and the Cape Cod military base where the migrants were transported after two days on the island, told NCR that their plight illustrates how the United States has failed to address immigration in \u201ca fair, just and human way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead of looking at the human situation of these people, many politicians use it for their own political agenda instead,\u201d da Cunha said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s unfortunate because we are dealing here with human beings, with vulnerable persons, in many situations children, women and older people. We can\u2019t use them as political pawns for our own personal interest and agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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A migrant is seen on a bus Sept. 14 in Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Massachusetts. (CNS\/Vineyard Gazette via Reuters\/Ray Ewing)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Da Cunha echoed other Catholic bishops, religious leaders and immigration advocates who criticized DeSantis and Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona for what they see as a cruel ploy to score political points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies in New York, a Scalabrinian think tank, said: \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s cute. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s funny. I have no idea what [the Republican governors] are even thinking other than that they\u2019re just filled with scorn for these people and for the communities that they\u2019re sending them to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kerwin told NCR that in many cases, migrants have been transported to cities thousands of miles from their scheduled hearings in the federal immigration courts. The receiving communities are not told in advance that the migrants will be arriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a disgrace, and I don\u2019t know how [the Republican governors] can live with themselves. I really don\u2019t,\u201d Kerwin said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a Sept. 19 Zoom meeting of interfaith religious leaders organized by Network, the Catholic social justice lobby, Mary Novak, the group\u2019s executive director, decried the \u201cpolitical theater\u201d that she said is exploiting migrant families and individuals for partisan purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese actions are unconscionable on so many levels,\u201d Novak said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guerrero, the immigration attorney, said the transported migrants often do not receive the documents that they need to know where and when their scheduled court hearings are to be held. Sometimes those documents are sent to nongovernment organizations that someone in the border states listed as the migrants\u2019 forwarding address after they arrived in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a break in communication with the immigration system and the person,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cAnd so, there are [deportation] orders in absentia that are being issued to migrants because they don\u2019t know what court they have to go to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mazzarella, the head of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Fall River, said her team and the various state-level agencies are working to transition the migrants \u2014 most of them single men in their 20s and 30s but also some families with young children \u2014 into housing with wraparound social services, including legal assistance with the immigration and asylum process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Sept. 18, the migrants have been staying in temporary accommodations at Joint Base Cape Cod. Mazzarella said a few of them said they plan to stay with family and friends in New York. Three said they wouldn\u2019t mind returning to Martha\u2019s Vineyard because of \u201chow beautiful\u201d the island is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut everybody else said, \u2018We don\u2019t have a preference of where we go. All we want to do is work, have a home and live peacefully.\u2019 That was the universal message with all of these migrants who came to us,\u201d Mazzarella said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re fleeing a country that is mired in poverty and want to have a better life for their family. It\u2019s really powerful,\u201d Mazzarella added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Da Cunha, who was born in Brazil and moved to the United States when he was a seminarian, said he hopes to meet with the migrants in person, and added that he has spoken with priests on the Cape to offer pastoral services to those who are Catholic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not involved in the whole politics of immigration. And none of us is advocating for open borders. That\u2019s not what we are advocating,\u201d da Cunha said. \u201cBut we are advocating for people to be treated with dignity, justice and fairness. We are here to show that these people are human beings, that they have dignity, and that they need help.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on ncronline.orgby Brian Fraga FALL RIVER, MASS. \u2014 Susan Mazzarella said her Spanish language translator\u2019s eyes filled with tears as the Venezuelan migrants who were flown to Martha\u2019s Vineyard on Sept. 16 recounted the details of how they fled their country in search of a better life in the United States. \u201cWhile leaving Venezuela,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crosspost_to_1":false,"_crosspost_to_16":false,"_crosspost_to_17":false,"_crosspost_to_18":false,"_crosspost_to_19":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3702,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/3702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ccfrdioc.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}