But they couldn't have made their way through that treacherous terrain without the help of Christian organizations many paid by our Protestant and Catholic bureaucracies. The organizations that helped them with food and shelter and even rape kits.
Among Lutherans alone under the Biden administration, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (now renamed Global Refuge) received over $881 million in U.S. government grants for migrant and refugee assistance, with annual amounts in FY 2021 and FY 2022 exceeding $93 million and $182 million respectively. Obviously not all that was spent in Panama or at our border, but that's a lot of salaries and support services and also the creation of small communities that never existed before. When bus loads disgorged in NYC or Washington DC you may have noticed from media coverage or TikTok reels how well dressed the invaders were--good shoes, clothing appropriate for the season, cell phones, etc. Your own congregations may not be as well fed and shod.
Shocking to me, and I asked Chat-gpt several ways, there is no record of or even if the individual congregations of Lutheran or Catholic of Baptists ever gave any money for these "good works."
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/darien-gap-we-crossed-jungle-looking-better-future-not-our-lives-end
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