'Leaders of Tomorrow' Series: Clark University Students Providing Assistance to Asylum Seekers at US-Mexico Border

  Katie Larrivee is pictured with another volunteer.

The following report was provided by Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden. 

WORCESTER, MA — On June 26, seven students from Clark University in Worcester traveled to McAllen, Texas, where they will spend the next several weeks providing assistance to asylum seekers entering the United States at its border with Mexico.

The students are participating in an internship program at the university, offered through the college’s department of International Development, Community & Environment (IDCE) — an interdisciplinary program that integrates social science, natural science and humanities. The department regularly partners with groups in the community as a way for students to learn more about, and address, complex socio economic and political issues.

The brand-new program was coordinated by Timothy Downs, Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Policy at Clark, and Sarah Mitchell, who was a Visiting Assistant Professor last year in International Development.

The internship was created in conjunction with Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit, grassroots organization, based in Beacon, New York. The group, run completely by volunteers, organizes efforts across the country that assist immigrants, especially those affected by the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy for those attempting to cross into the U.S. at the country’s southern borders.

Elena Novak, a former journalist, serves as a volunteer.

Grannies Respond routinely sends people from the community to the border to assist permanent volunteers there, says Catherine Cole, Co-Executive Director Grannies Respond/Abuelas Responden Inc., and the national organizer of the Grannies Respond Overground Railroad Project.

“The collaboration with the Clark students is a welcome opportunity for Grannies Respond to connect with university students and to reaffirm that young and old alike can have a voice and be proactive in addressing humanitarian issues,” Cole said. “We hope these students will speak to other organizations when they return and that we will expand our internship program to other universities.”

While in Texas, the Clark students are working with Catholic Charities and Angry Tías y Abuelas to meet the direct needs of immigrants at respite centers after they have been processed by authorities, including helping them get to the bus station on their way to travel to places where their sponsors await.

“They will also help other volunteers who cross the bridges to check on the needs of those waiting for very long periods on the Mexico side, huddled under tarps for shade and shelter, simply making a human connection with those whose future is uncertain,” Downs said. “It is hard to imagine a more vulnerable situation: fleeing one’s home from threat of violence with just the clothes on your back and often with young children; facing a very uncertain future in terms of U.S. entry, and facing deportation back to the place you fled from.”

A Good Fit

Downs created the internship at Clark after joining members of Grannies Respond when they traveled last summer to McAllen, where participants volunteered at the border and raised awareness of issues related to separation of immigrant families.

Folks he met at the border last summer told him they needed more volunteers, so, upon his return to Worcester, he and some of his students created the internship, in coordination with Grannies Respond.

Downs says he and his colleagues at Clark are dedicated to finding powerful ways for the university to show up and have an impact, and that this program fits well with Clark’s organizational and educational goals, which include meeting the professional and academic needs of our graduate students who are training to be practitioners, and to use the power of the university to provide support to immigrants and the organizations that support them –-- developing a long-term partnership in this pressing area of work.

“We feel that the university, as an institution, needs to step up and reimagine its role in the face of complex social and environmental challenges of the 21st century,” Downs said. “I wanted to find a way for students at Clark to help us continue this important humanitarian work.”

The Fab 4 Volunteers: Stephanie Rowlett, Tempe Staples, Halley Glier and Emma Gregory

The participants are mainly master’s degree students in either Global & Community Health, Community Development & Planning, or International Development, although some are recent graduates seeking work in this arena. The main requirement for participation, Downs says, is that they have an academic and professional interest in the focal area of refugees and forced migration, and have demonstrated a commitment since last fall to co-creating this project.

“The internship offers an opportunity for students to gain valuable professional experience on the frontline of immigration issues, and to undertake observational research that helps them (and us) better understand what is happening at the U.S./Mexico Border and what the needs are of immigrants and the volunteer groups who help them. For the students I know it will be a powerful experience that will help shape their own contributions,” Downs said. “Lastly – and perhaps most of all, we wanted to do this as an expression of our own humanity – to help our fellow human beings who are oppressed, in dire straits and who need us.”

Why They Are Involved

The group of seven students left Worcester early in the morning, Wednesday, June 26, by car, and arrived Sunday, June 30, in McAllen, where they are volunteering for the month of July. The group is staying at a local motel.

The internship, including housing, has been funded largely by a $5,000 grant from the Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Luxembourg Program at Clark University, as part of the foundation’s support of the college’s Master of Health Science in Global & Community Health.

Elena Novak, who graduated in May from Clark, where she studied international development and social change, is a former journalist from Cape Coral, Florida. She said she decided to volunteer for the program because she was frustrated by what she saw as conflicting information being reported by the media.

“I felt it was important, if not necessary, to see for myself what was going on in order to bring that information back to my community,” Novak said. “We need to convey the fact that it is our responsibility, not just as a nation but as human beings, to intervene in humanitarian crises because the promotion and protection of human rights is an end in itself.”

This is not the first trip to the border for Aran Valente, a master’s degree student from North Kingston, Rhode Island, who is studying Health Science in Community and Global Health. In 2007, he interned as a union organizer for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL-CIO) in Arizona.

“Having had that experience made me particularly interested in learning about other forms of activism at the U.S.-Mexico border in another state, and how politics have and haven't changed for migrants,” he said.

Halley Glier, of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, a master’s degree student studying community development and planning, says friends and family members asked her if she’s excited about the trip.

“Excited is definitely not the word I would use,” Glier wrote in a blog she is writing about the experience. “Although I’m curious, this trip scares me in a healthy way — a way that will challenge me and teach me more than any classroom could. I expect to be completely drained physically, mentally, and emotionally. But I also expect that our team (a group that mostly just met around the formation of this trip) will become a major emotional support network, as we challenge each other and ourselves.”

Temperance Staples of Littleton, Massachusetts, is also a master’s degree student in Health Science in Global & Community Health. She says she views the trip as a chance to personally bear witness to what’s happening at the border.

“I hope to make a human connection that goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle,” Staples said. “And I want to be part of reporting the truth.”

The other participating students are Emma Gregory, Katie Larrivee and Stephanie Rowlett.