One Night in a Shelter, the Next on the Streets?

Juan Antonio Allauca Robles had seen too many drug dealers murder his former colleagues. 

So the Ecuadorian police officer made a plan. He would lie low in the countryside for a few months and figure out the logistics of heading north. He intended to eventually make it to the United States to seek asylum.

Last December, Allauca crossed part of Colombia and traveled on foot through the treacherous Darién jungle into Panama, accompanied by his wife, three children (ages 13, 2, and almost 1), his 18-year-old sister-in-law, and his father-in-law. 

“We were being threatened all the time,” he said. “It was hard to keep the teenagers and children safe.” 

The family arrived in Costa Rica on January 25, taking a bus to Los Chiles, a town of 20,500 people on the border with Nicaragua.

By then, the family had already heard the news that the Trump administration had strengthened border controls and had drastically cut asylum requests. So Allauca pivoted: His family would file for asylum in Costa Rica and try to make their home there.

Their first night in town, the family paid to sleep in someone’s garage. The next three nights they spent in a hotel room, thanks to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 

On Wednesday, the family relocated to Casa Esperanza, a Christian organization partnered with the UN to shelter migrants, hoping that they would be able to stay for the next ten days while they waited for their temporary residence permits. 

But on Tuesday night, the US government announced it had frozen all foreign aid. Casa Esperanza had just signed a UN contract to distribute resources provided by the US government. Shortly after the Allauca family arrived, the ministry announced that this funding cutoff would close its shelter.

Private donors sent funds to Casa Esperanza to house families with children until Sunday, February 2, allowing 16 people from three families to stay. After that, the ministry will be able to continue only its three-times-a-day meal program, funded by donations from the Adventist Development and Relief Agency. 

Allauca doesn’t know what to do. As a former police officer, he risks his life and the lives of his family if he returns to Ecuador. He also feels that continuing the journey to the US would be too much for his family members, who have already suffered from exhaustion and hunger. “The children have suffered a lot,” he said. 

Meanwhile, receiving a work permit may take up to four months, and Allauca has no idea how he will support six people in this new country. The family is sleeping in the Iglesia del Nazareno (Church of the Nazarene) in Los Chiles and eating and bathing in Casa Esperanza’s facilities. “We are in limbo,” he said.

Casa Esperanza’s staff can relate. The facility stopped receiving migrants last November after funds ran out, said Ruth Padilla DeBorst, the founder of Casa Adobe, the nonprofit that operates the ministry. She reported the news to Mesa de Movilidad, a coalition of organizations working with migrants in the area that includes UNICEF, UNHCR, World Vision, and Costa Rican government officials.

“That’s when the UN reached out to us,” said Padilla. “They told us to do the paperwork because there were funds available for us.”

The process moved swiftly. On January 4, Casa Esperanza received the green light to hire security and cleaning services for the facility, which could house up to 40 people. On January 6, the organization  welcomed its first migrants. At the time of the funding cutoff, the shelter had 24 adults and 9 children. Most of them intended to stay in Costa Rica.

In addition to a safe night’s rest—a luxury for migrants crossing Central America—Casa Esperanza also offered residents food, psychological support, medical care, and specialized attention for children, including recreational and educational activities. 

The Casa Esperanza contract provided $45,000 per month over five months, with the possibility of renewal. It was canceled after just three weeks, before even the first salaries could be paid to the staff hired specifically for the program.

“These people come from places where they have been threatened by drug cartels,” said Padilla. “They have suffered violence. We don’t want to throw them out onto the street.”

The UN receives funding from both voluntary and mandatory contributions from member states. By far the organization’s largest donor, the US allocated $12.9 billion to the UN in 2023, and its agencies—like the UNHCR, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the International Organization for Migration—receive over a third of their funding from the US. In the case of the World Food Program, half of its resources come from the US government. 

Gabriela Suárez and her 16-year-old daughter, Sofía, also recently arrived in Costa Rica, fleeing a neighborhood outside of Quito, Ecuador, that she felt was too dangerous for her family. Though Gabriela’s boyfriend had started the journey with them, he was detained and deported when they arrived in Panama. The mother and daughter continued without him, taking buses to cross Panama and then Costa Rica.

After arriving in the country, Gabriela felt welcomed by locals and by Casa Esperanza and started thinking about applying for a work permit and staying there. “But now, everything has changed,” she said. She wondered if her little remaining money should just go to making it to the US-Mexico border. 

Their immediate concern, however, is survival. “Right now we don’t have any money, not even to eat,” said Gabriela. “I’m going to see if I can get a tent so that we don’t sleep on the street.”

The post One Night in a Shelter, the Next on the Streets? appeared first on Christianity Today.

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