Veronica Montes, an associate professor of sociology and co-director of the Latin American, Iberian, and Latina/o Studies minor at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, wrote that the migrants arriving at the U.S./Mexico border “differ significantly from those of earlier decades.” 

For decades, the majority of migrants came from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. But in 2020, the Migration Policy Institute reported that 12 percent of migrant encounters at the southern border involved migrants from beyond those four countries. In 2023, for the first time ever, more than half of those reaching the U.S./Mexico border originated beyond Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.  

The new arrivals are coming from more numerous and varied points of origin. They hail from Caribbean countries like Haiti and Cuba, West African nations such as Senegal and Ghana, South American states like Colombia or Venezuela, Asian countries like China, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, as well as Russia and Ukraine.  

During Montes’ fieldwork at a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, personnel shared, “they had sheltered immigrants from 45 different countries from all continents.” 

Finding halal hospitality at the U.S./Mexico border 

With increased geographic representation has come a wider array of religious identifications among migrants too.  

Sonia Tinoco García, president and founder of the Latina Muslim Foundation, started to notice an uptick in Muslims making their way through Tijuana, Mexico all the way back in 2014. It was then that García — herself a Mexican-American Muslim convert — started visiting the border city with other Latina Muslims from San Diego. They crossed the border with the intention of serving vulnerable migrant populations, particularly women and children.  

But as they visited shelters across town, they started to notice more and more Muslims and shelters shared that they struggled to provide for their particular needs. Whether it was providing halal food, a clean place to pray or providing legal materials in languages they were familiar with beyond Spanish and English (e.g., Arabic, Urdu or Farsi), most shelters were struggling to cope with the new arrivals.  

That is when García and her team decided to step in. They covered the cost of hotel rooms for Muslim migrants, provided them with food and clothing, and connected them with organizations that offered legal aid — all thanks to donations from Muslims in San Diego and Orange counties in Southern California. As her reputation grew, García started to receive calls whenever Muslim migrants arrived at other shelters in the border city.  

Then, in spring 2022, the Latina Muslim Foundation opened Albergue Assabil, the first shelter for Muslim migrants along the U.S./Mexico border.  

“We are here,” García said, “to provide shelter for any and all, but especially for those who are looking for a place to pray, to eat halal food, and enjoy our Mexican Muslim hospitality.”  

There has been some reporting around potential terror groups smuggling operatives across the U.S./Mexico border — and tenuous connections made between Albergue Assabil and these speculative statistics. But amidst the sensationalism, the shelter has quietly gone about its work, serving over 3,000 migrants in its first two years of operation. Many of those migrants have been women, attracted to the shelter because of its separate men’s and women’s facilities and the fact that Albergue Assabil is female-led. And they have not all been Muslim women either.  

García said multiple women on the move through Tijuana have been drawn to the shelter because of its female leadership and generally safe, respectful environment. “There’s something here they find attractive, so they keep coming,” she said, “we are here to serve all who come through our doors.”  

In addition to Albergue Assabil, there are other, pioneering Muslim organizations across the U.S. that serve immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Radiant Hands Inc., originally founded in Gainesville, Florida and now headquartered in Tampa, is a refugee resettlement agency.  

In partnership with Islamic Relief USA and the International Rescue Committee, Radiant Hands has helped provide reception and placement services to refugees and asylum-seekers — both Muslim and non-Muslim — from Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Republic of Congo. Radiant Hands is the only federal resettlement agency working with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees & Migration, alongside other religious organizations such as Lutheran Services, Church World Service, and Gulf Coast Jewish Family as the city’s official resettlement agencies. 

America’s long history with multi-faith immigration  

Multi-faith immigration to the United States is, at the same time, nothing new.  

In the 1800s, as crops failed, taxes increased, work was hard to come by and government regulations limited the free practice of their religion, people in many parts of the world left their homes and came to the U.S. looking for opportunities and for relief from persecution.  

Between 1870-1900, some 12 million immigrants arrived, from Germany, Ireland, England and Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. Largely Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, there was variety within their ranks as well. On the U.S. West Coast, a relatively large number of Chinese immigrants came during the California gold rush starting in 1849. That stream of new arrivals stopped after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress in 1882. 

Though various immigrant quotas limited the number of immigrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act, which started to undo such racist immigration quotas and reopened the country to a wider range of newcomers. Coupled with the cultural revolution of the 1960s, there was a vast expansion in the U.S.’s religious diversity, with Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and other populations growing rapidly over the intervening decades.  

An interfaith approach to polarization around immigration  

But despite long being a nation of immigrants with various faith convictions, the U.S. has also struggled with division, polarization and xenophobia — fear or hatred of those deemed “Other” — related to this diversity. Look no further than the anti-immigrant cat hoax controversies centering around the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio and the false notion that Haitian vodou was driven immigrants there to steal, sacrifice, and consume local cats.  

Surya Kalra, Organizer with the SW Industrial Areas Foundation and lead organizer for EPISO/Border Interfaith, said part of her work focuses on reducing the polarity and “Other”-hate so prevalent in immigration rhetoric.  

Working with people in congregations, schools and local nonprofits, Kalra and her collaborators focus on building relationships to counter fear and combat hate.  

Kalra said within any institution or tradition, there are people who become ideologically rigid about a whole range of issues, including within religious communities. The key, she said, is to keep people talking.  

Over the last couple of years, EPISO/Border Interfaith worked with the Catholic Diocese of El Paso to convene a series of events they call “house meetings,” focused on teaching people how to have conversations on divisive topics. Encouraging people to share experiences and not political postures, Kalra said they have taken up national issues of import, as well as local ones like job training or sewer infrastructure in low-income neighborhoods and colonias in El Paso.  

Given the rhetoric around immigration and migrants in the lead-up to November elections, they convened a “house meeting” on the topic in August 2024. Kalra and other leaders invited participants to get into groups with people they did not know and share their own “immigration story.” 

“Some were involved in some shape or form with migration ministries, others helped people come across, and still others had been living in the U.S. without papers for decades,” she said.  

Sharing those stories, rather than political opinions, helped people connect on a human level before delving into potentially divisive topics like deportation or DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. “We tend to have stereotypes about others, but when you listen to what peoples’ experiences really are, it’s harder to position yourself against others.”  

Clergy from various traditions — Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish — also shared what is said within their own communities and sacred scriptures about how to welcome people and being hospitable to the stranger.  

Both aspects of the “house meetings” — experiential relationships and reminders of shared values — are vital at a time when immigrants are often scapegoated, amidst a charged atmosphere of economic, political, and social instability and anxiety.  

“People don’t scapegoat immigrants for no reason,” Kalra said, “there are real stresses folks are facing in a post-industrial economy. They don’t feel okay.” That is why Kalra believes it is important to listen to one another and find a way to understand — and address — the bigger factors and real issues people of various political and religious persuasions are concerned about.  

“If we are going to do it, we are going to have to do it together,” she said.  

A better, more diverse, nation of immigrants 

That theme of togetherness despite differences is a consistent one when talking to volunteers and organizers of multiple faiths working on the frontlines of immigration.  

And it is often religious actors, communities and organizations on the frontlines — at the border and beyond — receiving migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers via shelters, providing aid, offering family reunification services, employer sponsorship, or providing refugee resettlement and asylum sponsorships. They not only provide front-line services to migrants and refugees but are also often called on to fill gaps where local, state or federal government agencies and programs fall short. 

Beyond organizations like Albergue Assabil and EPISO/Border Interfaith, there are groups like Sewa, a Hindu-based nonprofit providing refugee welfare services and HIAS, a Jewish American organization providing humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees and migrants. Recently, evangelicals have been taking advantage of the Welcome Corps program, with churches and individual families sponsoring migrants and asylum seekers across the U.S. There are also interfaith advocacy coalitions like Interfaith Immigration, which involves 50 national, faith-based organizations “committed to enacting fair and humane immigration reform,” according to the group’s website.  

In short, a range of religious communities are involved in immigration across the U.S. — as migrants and those who serve them.  

Rick — the volunteer in San Diego — said, the multi-faith character of American immigration, brings both challenges and opportunities. “With the increasing diversity of newcomers’ religious traditions presents some difficulties,” he said, “but it also offers us the chance to learn together, grow together and find a way forward together. 

“I may be an optimist, but I tend to think the more people, from more backgrounds, living, working, and finding solutions together here in the States makes for a better nation, not a worse one,” he said.