A Waiting Room to Nowhere

We are at a dangerous point in the history of democracy when hundreds of thousands of forced migrants and asylum seekers are dehumanized, and denied the safety they seek, simply because our elected leaders have neither the courage nor the wisdom to address immigration reform. It is a shame, and it is shameful.

As a nation of immigrants, what is our responsibility to the thousands of children, women and men at our southern border?

Poverty, gang extortion and violence, human trafficking, corrupt governments, climate change and war have left these people no option but to leave their homeland. Often the only thing they carry, besides a few belongings stuffed into a backpack, is their hope for a better life in America. That, and the courage and determination that it takes to make the journey of thousands of miles, mostly on foot, and always with the threat of robbery, rape, kidnapping and extortion following them through a brutal landscape.

And when they reach the U.S.-Mexico border? They wait. And wait. For months, and often for over a year. In camps with too little food and fresh water, poor sanitation, inadequate shelter from the weather, few opportunities to earn even a little money, and the ever-present threat of extortion and violence as gangs prey on the vulnerable.

Filmmaker Bob Bilheimer spent months between 2021 and 2023 in the Rio Grande Valley, filming in Matamoros, Reynosa, and Jurárez, Mexico, visiting shelters and camps, and interviewing social workers, full-time volunteers, nuns, activists, pastors, psychologists, and the families themselves. His film, Running To Stand Still: Migrants Search For Hope In The Promised Land, focuses in particular on the lives of the children – the innocent victims of the myriad forces that have chased them from home, and then trapped them in “a waiting room to nowhere.”

Ours is a country literally built by immigrants, whose historical entry place welcomes migrants with Lady Liberty declaring, “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The wretched refuse of your tired shore/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” How did we become a nation that forces the huddled masses to return to poverty, violence and hopelessness, instead of providing a refuge and a future? What will it take to regain the humanity on which this nation was created?

In this Forum event, we will view the film trailer for Running To Stand Still and Bilheimer’s previous short film Oh Mercy, also on the border situation, prior to the discussion, setting the stage for our conversation with Bob Bilheimer. Bob will share not only his observations of the conditions in the immigrant camps in this particular crisis, but also his experience in the use of filmmaking as a tool for social justice.

Joining Bob at the Forum are two experts who will also appear in Running to Stand Still and lend their perspectives to this important topic: Pastor Abraham Barberi, the director of One Mission Ministries, a nonprofit ministry in Matamoros, Mexico that cares for thousands of immigrants seeking asylum at the U.S./Mexico border; and Jesús de la Torre, a research fellow at Hope Border Institute focused on the root causes of forced migration, and the impact of border externalization policies have on the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.