A Child Is Born in Nogales
A baby will soon be born in Nogales.
Nearly two years have passed since Selma and her family arrived in Nogales, Mexico. She had hoped to continue to the United States in search of a better future for her family, but when those plans changed, life did not stop. We helped her enroll her children in school here in Nogales, where they made friends and experienced the ordinary rhythms of childhood.
Now, another child will join their family. This baby’s earliest experiences of home and community will begin here in Nogales.
Selma’s story feels especially significant as we approach the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees on September 27. This year, Pope Leo XIV asks the Church to turn its attention toward children with the theme, “Even Just One of These Children.” Drawing on Jesus’ words that whoever receives a child in His name receives Him, Pope Leo invites us to encounter migrant children first as children: each with inherent dignity, a story, fears, dreams, and the right to grow and flourish.
His invitation raises a question that has become increasingly important in our work at Kino Border Initiative: What does it mean to receive a child when that child and their family remain long enough to begin building a life alongside us?
For many families in the Kino community, months in Nogales have become a year, then two. As life has continued and families’ needs have changed, our accompaniment has grown with them. Welcoming the human family means being present not only in moments of crisis, but also for the ordinary work of living. And perhaps nowhere is that passage of time more visible than in the lives of children.
A Place to Be Children
In 2024, when Clara arrived in Nogales from Guerrero with her husband and three children, displacement and instability had been particularly difficult for her youngest son. At school, he struggled to adapt and concentrate.
Little by little, his teacher began to see improvement. He participated more, spent time with his classmates, and began to enjoy being at school. More than a year after the family arrived, Clara watched him finish the school year happy among other children, holding his diploma.
“Little by little, we are moving forward,” she reflected.
Similar to Clara and her son, Camila, a mother of four who also arrived to Nogales in 2024 has watched something similar unfold among her children as they have adjusted to a new country, culture, climate, and way of life. Her two younger children celebrated their first- and second-grade graduations, while her oldest daughter completed fourth grade. But for Camila, the milestones represent something even simpler.
“When I see them getting excited about their classes, their friends, or a graduation, I feel like they get to be children again,” she said.
Camila’s words point to something easily overlooked in conversations about migration: childhood does not wait for a family’s circumstances to be resolved. School days, friendships, play, birthdays, and other milestones continue to shape children’s lives even amid uncertainty.
Pope Leo’s invitation to receive “even just one of these children” asks us to make room for these ordinary experiences of childhood, too. Receiving a child means caring for their immediate needs, but it also means creating space for them to learn, play, form friendships, and simply be children.
And as children find room to grow, their parents are working to build stability alongside them.
Parents Building Toward Stability in our Livelihood Project
As their children find room to learn, play, and grow, parents are doing their own work of building stability.
Clara and Camila have both learned new skills in our Livelihood Project. For Clara, that includes selling food and baked goods to help support her family. Camila, while caring for her four children, has begun selling jewelry and baked goods as well. Alongside caring for their children, both women are utilizing the Livelihood Project workshops to boost skills to find ways to earn an income and provide greater stability for their families.
Azul knows how much persistence that can require. She arrived in Nogales at 19 years old with her daughter, Natalie, who was only a month old. Without a support network or a source of income, Azul began looking for ways to use the skills she already had.
Around the Christmas season, she began making and selling piñatas. Later, she started selling flavored ice pops, first inside the shelter and eventually testing the market by selling on the street corner. Over time, she invested in additional products and obtained her own permit to sell them.
In the nine months since arriving, Azul has worked to build a life for herself and her daughter in Nogales. Today, she continues searching for formal employment, while finding and creating opportunities to support them along the way. Her story, like Clara’s and Camila’s, shows that building stability rarely happens all at once. It takes shape little by little, as families use the skills and opportunities available to them to move forward.
As families have taken these steps, Kino’s accompaniment has had to grow alongside them. Immediate needs remain, but so does a growing need for opportunities to learn, work, earn an income, and build toward greater stability.
Building Community Together in Nogales
Building greater stability also means having opportunities to put skills into practice. Through partnerships with local organizations, KBI has helped connect families in our community with vocational training, accredited courses, and other livelihood opportunities. In June, we celebrated as participants completed several of these programs. In the months since, many have begun putting into practice what they’ve learned.
That next step is visible at the mercaditos Kino has organized with local parishes and community partners. At the most recent market, 16 individuals from Kino’s Livelihoods Project sold foods and handmade goods within the broader Nogales community. Tables were filled with mole, arepas, pupusas, pan dulce, empanadas, aguas frescas, and other foods, alongside embroidered napkins, bracelets, bags, and coin purses made in the embroidery workshop.
These markets give entrepreneurs opportunities to earn income and support their families, but something else happens there, too. People meet one another. Someone who might otherwise be known only as a “migrant” becomes the neighbor who made the bread, prepared the pupusas, or embroidered the bag someone wears out and about in Nogales.
And the investment moves in both directions. Families are sharing their skills, traditions, work, and creativity with Nogales, while parishes and community spaces are opening their doors so that new entrepreneurs have places to sell what they make and build relationships. KBI plans to continue these mercaditos monthly, rotating locations among different parishes and community spaces so that those relationships can continue to grow.
This is one way that community takes shape: people are given room to invest in their own futures, their work becomes part of the life of Nogales, and the community makes more room for them in return.
A Reality Beyond Nogales
Nearly 2,000 miles south of the U.S.–Mexico border, Anabel Córdova, KBI’s Director of Services, and Juan Cuéllar, Director of Education and Advocacy, met Jaime, a Mexican national disoriented and displaced after being deported away from his home and community in the U.S.
Jaime had lived in El Paso, Texas, for 20 years, where his U.S.-citizen children still live. After being transferred to ICE custody and detained for 10 days, he was deported by air to Tapachula, Chiapas, far from his family, support network, and his place of origin in Ciudad Juárez.
At a Mexican government reception center, Jaime received a card worth approximately $100, but not the bus ticket or health insurance he had been told would be provided. His funds carried him only as far as Mexico City, where he slept on the street and was robbed of his belongings, including his identification to further process important Mexican paperwork. .
Anabel and Juan met Jaime at a shelter during a work visit to migrant service organizations in Mexico City and Tapachula. Without his documents, Jaime could not simply continue north. KBI helped him obtain his repatriation document, purchase a bus ticket, and welcomed him to Nogales.
Jaime’s experience illustrates the consequences of recent U.S. deportation practices that are increasingly sending Mexican nationals to as far south of Mexico as possible, like the city of Tapachula, nearly 2,000 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border and, for many, far from family and support networks. It also shows how practical accompaniment, from securing a document to purchasing a bus ticket, can help someone move from being stranded toward determining what comes next.
KBI cannot physically accompany every person everywhere. Our arms cannot embrace the entire human family. But recognizing that limitation also clarifies our calling: not necessarily to grow wider, but to continue growing deeper.
Growing Deeper Alongside One Another
Nearly two years after arriving in Nogales, Selma is preparing to welcome another member of her family here. Her story does not tell us that uncertainty has disappeared or that every question about her family’s future has been answered. It reminds us that life continues even while those questions remain.
We see that passage of time in Natalie, too. She arrived in Nogales at just one month old. Today, she is 10 months old, growing alongside a mother who has spent those months creating new opportunities for them both.
Accompaniment asks us to grow alongside people through those changes. Here in Nogales, that means deeply accompanying the people before us, through school days and new jobs, birthdays and new babies, uncertainty and new beginnings.
Pope Leo’s invitation to receive “even just one of these children” reminds us that sweeping conversations about migration ultimately come down to individual human lives: one child, one mother, one father, one family. Receiving them means making room not only for their arrival, but for the life that comes afterward: to grow, contribute, form relationships, and belong.
Your support makes that accompaniment possible. Together, we can continue making room for families to grow and flourish in community.
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