We’ve been very busy in the past month, bringing acupuncture and other healing treatments to asylum seekers and refugees at the US-Mexico border. AWB volunteers offered treatments in Brownsville, TX-Matamoros, Mexico over the weekend of January 24th-26th, and a team of seven volunteers just returned from a week-long service trip in Tijuana, Mexico. We did hundreds of treatments at the Espacio Migrante clinic, Prevencasa clinic, and in multiple refugee shelters throughout Tijuana. This is AWB’s fourth trip to the CA-Mexico border, and this time, we trained six midwives and other health professionals to do NADA treatments so that they can offer ongoing services in clinics and shelters.
The health status of many asylum seekers in Mexico (including many people from Central America, Haiti, and Africa) is increasingly precarious because the Mexican government stopped providing health insurance coverage for migrants on January 1st. Refugees will have to rely on services provided by clinics like Espacio Migrante and Prevencasa (sponsored by the Refugee Health Alliance), more than ever. Uniquely, these two clinics provide integrative care, including natural therapies like acupuncture and herbs. On this trip, AWB volunteers also reorganized the entire drug pharmacy and herbal pharmacy at Espacio, so that practitioners could access what they need more effectively.
We also joined the InnSpot, an AWB-affiliated Military Stress Recovery Project clinic based in San Diego, to offer treatments at the US Deported Veterans Center in Tijuana. The Center, run by Hector Lopez, Lupita Cibrian, and Robert Vivar, provides legal and social support to US military veterans that have been deported from the US. In the words of one supporter:
“These (soldiers) grew up in the US, went to school in the US, played high school sports in the US, and paid taxes in the US. They did not join the military just to become citizens, as many of them felt like they were already citizens. They joined the military because they felt like it was their duty, and the fact that they were deported after serving their country is incomprehensible.”
– Journalist Mike Tork
Mayway Corporation in Oakland, CA has donated significant amounts of herbs to our Border Project, and is the sponsor of our AWB’s Military Stress Recovery Project clinic program. Mayway’s help has been pivotal in starting and growing our work with refugees and veterans and we are very grateful. Deep appreciation to the CA Endowment, Kurt Chilcott, Pat Simpson, those who have donated, and all the volunteers who have worked tirelessly to help make this work possible!
With your help, AWB will continue treating people in Texas, California, and Mexico over the next months, and hopes to start a project at the Arizona-Mexico border soon. For more information contact Carla Cassler at director@acuwithoutborders.org.
This report comes from Diana Fried, Founder & Co-Executive Director, who just returned from Matamoros:
Just back from Matamoros, Mexico, an area where the bridge between the US and Mexico meets land. I was there in January and everything is completely different.
Where there were 10 or 20 people waiting to seek asylum then, now there are a thousand in tents cramped together on the bridge and in an area just off the bridge.
We walk from the comfortable world of the US that we live in, with our fresh clean clothes and just showered bodies, just 10 minutes, pay our $1.00 in quarters to cross, and all of a sudden we are worlds away in stench-filled garbage- filled camp with lovely people who are sad and happy and with their families and alone, cooking and cleaning and walking and trying to remember who they are such a long way from home in a foreign land simply trying to find a little bit of safety and a home.
It is rough beyond that 10 minutes from the US border.
The eight of us AWB team members are thrown into a completely different land and we lose track of ourselves as well for this temporary time. As we walk through the smoke-filled dusty path of the tent camp, trting not to step on garbage, we see the cobb ovens that the people have created by digging down to mud and then pulling it up and drying it so they have something to cook on. The ingenuity is amazing.
There are piles of stuff everywhere and kids running around. Women look exhausted and disheveled, some of them. Others look absolutely pristine with their makeup and smiles. It is hard to know what is going on.
We hear that 100 people crossed over the border last night. They have left all their stuff and some people are scrounging through piles and piles of things to find what maybe they can use.
We do our peaceful treatments and then we hear that for one man, he has not had a moment since he can remember where he hasn’t been thinking and worrying and fearing for the life of his son and himself. We watched him go very deep in the treatment and afterwards he told us that it was the only time he was thought free since this whole horrendous journey.
People are so grateful, so open and loving. Our hearts open too for this time. And our tears stream sometimes.
One of our team members sees a boy she had seen before. This time he will not accept any hugs, and he is totally withdrawn. He says he doesn’t hug anymore. Our team member is torn apart and wonders what happened to him during these months.
As we go back to the US, walking 10 minutes, one of the team members says to me this was a good day, this is how a day can be, this was a day of giving where we feel full from it. It is so simple when the exchange is like this. Sweaty and dirty now, we go eat tacos and ice cream and laugh a lot together and once again I fall in love with these incredible people who come into the world of AWB to do this giving. It is a miracle.
Since January 2019, AWB has been working at the US-Mexico border to bring trauma healing treatments to migrating people and community volunteers. Our work began in Texas, and has expanded to California, where AWB volunteers have taken two week-long service trips since August, 2019. We’ve treated hundreds of people-asylum seekers and refugees who face devastating living conditions, legal challenges, and health problems – as well as community activists and health practitioners who often suffer from secondary trauma due to their tireless, supportive work.
AWB acupuncturist and trainer Julia Raneri providing treatments in Tijuana, October 2019
AWB is working with the Refugee Health Alliance in Tijuana, as well as local migrant support organizations in Southern California. We offer direct service (acupuncture, herbal medicine, body work) and are training local practitioners, to expand services and access for thousands of people who need help with physical and emotional pain.
AWB’s goal is to train enough practitioners to provide weekly trauma-reduction acupuncture services in Southern CA-Tijuana locations within the next year.
Mobile integrative treatment team from the Refugee Health Alliance, including AWB volunteers, at Jardins de Mariposa, a shelter for LGBT asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico (August 2019)
AWB volunteers Julia Raneri, Meg McDowell, Jennifer Trombley, and Carla Cassler just returned from four days at the Enclave Caracol Clinic (sponsored by the Refugee Health Alliance) in Tijuana, Mexico. This is the first of regular service trips that AWB will be making in the coming year to provide trauma and pain relief treatments to asylum seekers, immigrants, refugees, and community support volunteers in the Tijuana-San Diego area. AWB already has a similar project in Texas.
Over 9,000 people are waiting in Tijuana for asylum processing, many living in shelters under very difficult conditions. The Refugee Health Alliance was created last year “to help mobilize Southern California providers and their networks down to the Tijuana/San Diego international border to aid in the refugee crisis.” The Enclave Caracol Clinic, staffed by volunteer medical providers, herbalists and midwives, is open weekdays to provide integrative medical services to the migrating community. On Saturdays, additional volunteers staff mobile clinics in shelters throughout Tijuana, where people are living while they wait.
On this first service trip, we treated many people (most from Honduras, Haiti, and Cameroon) for significant pain and trauma patterns. We also worked with clinic herbalists to enhance a wonderful pharmacy that includes many traditional Mexican herb remedies. Over the next months, as we work with the clinic staff, we will learn more about traditional healing practices and herbal medicine used in Mexico and Central America, and offer Chinese medicine as a complement.
We plan to train local practitioners to provide treatments, and work on the California side of the border to support asylum seekers once they are within US borders.
Special thanks to the Mayway Corporation for donating huge amounts of herbs, to Lhasa OMS and Acurea Medical for acupuncture supplies, and to Kurt Chilcott (CA Endowment) and Patricia Simpson for financial support for this project. If you would like to participate in this project, please contact Carla Cassler at director@acuwithoutborders.org.
Please check out our newvideo,AWB Bridging Borders, which documents our work with immigrants, asylum-seekers and community volunteers at the Texas/Mexico Border. Thanks to Diana Fried and Naike Swai for their work on this!
There is a humanitarian crisis at the U.S./Mexico border. Large numbers of refugees are camping out for weeks and months on or near the international bridges connecting Mexico and Texas. They hope to enter the United States legally; many seek asylum. They have few resources and are in desperate need, relying heavily on grassroots volunteers from the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) for sustenance. If allowed into the U.S., they spend additional weeks or months sleeping on the floor in harsh conditions in detention centers at the border, where only minimal clothing and food are provided. From there they may be deported or eventually released, sometimes hundreds at a time, with no resources and often nowhere to go.
Between January 4 and January 6, 2019, an 8- member team representing Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) conducted 4 acupuncture trauma-relief clinics in the RGV in response to this humanitarian crisis. We partnered with Angry Tías & Abuelas of the RGV to identify local connections and site locations. Our goals were to offer primary trauma relief to asylum seekers and secondary trauma relief to community first responders.
