By Marv Knox
When Elket Rodríguez looks up to watch multitudes of birds fly over his head, he sees a metaphor for what is taking place all around him on the ground.
He lives in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, on the flight path of millions of birds migrating between North and South America. The Valley also sits on the path followed by thousands of human migrants from around the world who seek entrance into the United States.
Rodríguez ministers to those on-the-ground migrants. He’s a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel based in Harlingen, Texas, on the eastern border between the United States and Mexico. Recently, he’s taken on an additional assignment as CBF’s global migration advocate.
His background suits him perfectly to be the point person in one of the world’s busiest, most vibrant migrant mission fields.
He and his wife, Yesenia, are Puerto Rico natives who were displaced to the U.S. mainland in the wake of 2017’s Hurricane Maria. Although not technically migrants—Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory— they appreciate the cataclysmic change affiliated with uprooting family and relocating in a strange culture far from home.
He’s also an attorney with a background in family law and extensive insight into the complexities of the U.S. immigration system’s legal structure. He’s well-equipped to help migrants navigate the American asylum process.
And his heart overflows with compassion for vulnerable people. Almost as soon as he arrived on the mainland, Rodriguez helped an established West Texas congregation start a thriving Hispanic ministry. Now, he’s creating a community development ministry in the colonias, the impoverished unincorporated villages across the Valley.
“I am in community with migrants every day of my life in the Valley,” Rodríguez noted. “My neighbors are migrants. The people I go to church with are migrants. Asylum seekers—the people I do legal consults with—are migrants. Many immigration advocates I spend time with are migrants themselves.
“Migration is part of my life but it’s also part of my religious expression. Migrants are who I have been called to serve.”
Rodríguez lives in a great place to do that. Across two centuries, the Rio Grande Valley has been part of Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the United States. Population of the region is 95 percent Hispanic, “and we keep getting, on a daily basis, migrants coming to our border.”
Along with blending different races, the Valley also brings together individuals with varying legal statuses. “Go to church, especially a Hispanic church, and you have Customs and Border Protection personnel alongside undocumented immigrants,” he explained.
“We understand we are dealing with people. Those who live in border communities have been welcoming migrants even before there was a wall. So, brotherhood and sisterhood have existed in this region for decades and centuries.”
Today, migration in and through the Valley is part of a worldwide phenomenon, Rodríguez said, citing 281 million migrants globally, with 50.6 million in the United States. Around the world, 120 million migrants are classified as refugees, fleeing various kinds of persecution.
“Overwhelmingly, people feel forced to leave their countries in order to provide for their families and simply to keep on living,” he said. “Migrants are fleeing circumstances you and I would flee from. When you hear their stories, you would say, ‘I would’ve done the same thing, because the danger is too big.’”
Two types of migrants populate the Valley, he noted. First are migrants who have lived there five to 10 years or more and settled in more than 1,000 colonias, which are home to 200,000 people.
“Colonias are underserved,” he said. “Local governments do not provide running water, electricity, trash and water services, or police.” Average annual household income is $28,900.
Second are global migrants who seek U.S. asylum, he added. They face immediate needs, such as clothes and shoes, food and the first private restroom they may have seen in months.
At a respite center operated by West Brownsville Baptist Church, “women take their first bath alone after months of journey,” he said. “I have heard them crying and saying, ‘This is the first time I have gone to the bathroom without anyone watching me.’”
Although politicians and pundits offer conjecture or lies about migrants, Rodríguez cited five reasons for global migration and why desperate people seek U.S. asylum:
- Climate change. “It’s affecting the livelihood of a lot of people who work in agriculture,” he said. For example, coffee crops in parts of Latin America have disappeared.
- Government corruption. “They don’t care about providing even for basic needs or to do their job of providing a safe place to thrive.”
- Organized crime. Particularly in countries with failed governments, criminal organizations—sometimes called gangs or cartels—take over the informal economy and daily lives of citizens. They threaten sons, who must join up or be killed, and daughters, who are raped.
- Poverty and financial collapse. Many countries in the Global South have struggled financially for generations. But Covid decimated economies and escalated suffering. “Migrants are seeking to move to countries that have more resources. It’s a matter of surviving, right?”
- Foreign aggression. Wars have fueled a massive violation of human rights. “You can understand why people are saying, ‘I’m coming to the U.S. because I’m trying to protect my family, and I can’t go back.’”
Swept up in a tsunami of suffering, migrants have decided the United States is the place they must go to ensure the safety, much less the vitality, of their families, Rodríguez said.
Acknowledging “the phenomenon of asylum differs depending on the country,” he noted many young men seek asylum when they refuse to join a criminal organization.
“Here is a young male, who is a churchgoer or has Christian values. He’s strong, intelligent, level-headed. He’s someone the criminal organization is interested in,” he explained. “Even if he finds work, it’s not sufficient to provide for his family. So, a gang leader tells him: ‘Come work for me. I can pay you this much.’
“The young man says he’s not interested—because he has values. He doesn’t want to kidnap people, rape women, kill someone or threaten his neighbors. So, the cartel member says, ‘You join, or I’ll kill you or your mom; I’ll rape your sister.’ Either he stays where he is and probably dies, or he leaves his country.”
Unfortunately, the U.S. does not necessarily consider refusing to join a criminal organization a reason for asylum. But the Christian young man who won’t join a cartel hears U.S. politicians who claim to be fellow Christians calling him a criminal.
Similar cases involve Central American women who migrate to flee rape, Cuban and Venezuelan Christians whose governments deny them the right to food, and other forms of distress and persecution, he said.
When migrants approach the U.S. border in the Valley, Rodríguez is there to help in three contexts. “I’m an immigration attorney by training and I have a pastoral approach to the work I do,” he said. “I could not just sit down and take on a case without having a personal connection with the migrant, understanding this is not just a legal need, but a spiritual need.”
Rodríguez’s first context is humanitarian aid. He collaborates with partners to “fill the gaps” of migrants’ needs. Others may provide staples like food and clothing; he procures beds, strollers and other necessities.
His second context is legal knowledge. “I help migrants file their asylum petitions and learn how to get information about their cases,” he explained. “I refer them to legal services and to churches, depending on where they are going.”
The third context is advocacy for reforming the broken immigration system, which in his expanded capacity covers not only the Valley but the globe. “I go to Washington and sit down with lawmakers and try to effect changes in our immigration policies that would result in common-sense solutions that not only serve the nation but also meet the humanitarian needs of migrants,” he said.
Rodríguez, a natural-born collaborator, ministers alongside myriad partners. He works closely with Fellowship Southwest, who teamed up with CBF Advocacy to hire him as an immigration specialist from 2020 until 2022, when he became field personnel. One of his closest congregational partners for direct aid is West Brownsville Baptist Church. And he both supports and receives support from a host of ministry, nonprofit and advocacy groups that serve on the border.
He particularly leans into advocacy to try to fix “an immigration system that has not been reformed for over 30 years,” he said. “The needs of the world—and the United States—have changed. But available resources are not enough to meet the migrants who are arriving, and we do not provide more legal pathways for migrants to come to the United States,” even when both nation and migrants would benefit.
Immigration reform failed because the system is broken by design, he said. “Politicians campaign making promises about how they’re going to find solutions to the problem that they actually do not find a solution to. It remains broken because they profit from the brokenness.”
“We’re burning the wings of the future of our nation,” he added. A reformed immigration system would provide new residents who could add youth to the aging populace, provide productivity to address inflation, supply labor to compete globally and add vitality to struggling churches, he insisted.
Rodríguez cited a strong spiritual opportunity tied to migration. “White churches are dying across the United States, yet migrants are coming, and the majority are Christians,” he said. “God is sending us the nations. God is doing something new with migrants who are coming to the United States. They’re going to enrich our faith.”
Rodríguez is grateful CBF’s Offering for Global Missions enables him to stay on the border to make a difference in migrants’ lives. “Long-term presence is essential for the work I do,” he said. “I have the freedom to build deeper relationships, to do deeper work, not just with migrants, but with partners on the border.”
Migrants and partners reciprocate those feelings.
“If we could clone Elket, we could make a greater impact for the migrants and also help churches understand their role,” said Pilar Castrillo, who fled persecution in Venezuela nine years ago and now runs a ministry, called Migrant Journey, in Florida.
“Elket has impacted my life; he has impacted my ministry,” she said, explaining he provided not only clear information about the asylum process, but also compassionate understanding of her situation.
Iván Pérez, who immigrated from Mexico in 2017 and volunteers at West Brownsville Baptist Church’s respite shelter, credits Rodríguez with supporting him with both legal advice and spiritual counsel.
“I feel motivated to continue,” he said, grateful for Rodríguez. “I have to continue trusting in God and believing everything will fall into place.”
Stephen Reeves, executive director of Fellowship Southwest, noted “few folks are as versatile as Elket.”
“Since March of 2020, Elket has been a vital member of both the CBF and Fellowship Southwest teams,” Reeves said. “He is a utility infielder—filling multiple positions with excellence, from preaching and teaching at a church on Sunday morning, to advocating for just public policy in Washington, to helping migrants make a case for asylum.
“Few policy experts are as close to those impacted by laws and administrative decisions as Elket. That makes him a powerful advocate and a respected coalition member. And with so many field personnel serving in migrant and refugee communities, Elket is in an excellent position to help their ministries fuel powerful advocacy efforts.
“Also, Elket’s sense of humor endears him to the numerous pastors he works with along the border,” Reeves added. “Laughter often provides a needed dose of levity for those in the midst of so much trauma.”
Rodríguez acknowledged the future of migration is murky, for various political, economic and international reasons. But he expressed confidence he will continue to have plenty of ministry to do: “People are not going to stop coming.”
This story is from the most recent edition of Fellowship! magazine. To read more stories like this, or receive a print copy of the issue, please visit https://cbf.net/fellowship-magazine
Watch the documentary below to learn more about the Elket’s ministry on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of the inspirations for the 2024-2025 Offering For Global Missions campaign.