[Excerpt]

Mary Immaculate hosted a Dallas Area Interfaith meeting in late October where school, police and mental health officials committed to working with one another to better residents’ access to resources by placing a community health worker with the church and communicating better.

“We will not bury our loved ones anymore because of lack of access to mental health services,”

parishioner Natalia Valenzuela said at the meeting. “By getting the services we need and building unity, we will overcome.”

[Photo Credit: Shelby Tauber, Dallas Morning News]

This North Texas Church Lost Six Members to Suicide. Here’s What It’s Doing to Get Families Help, Dallas Morning News [pdf]

[Excerpts]

Some of the dozen people familiar with the conditions who spoke to The Dallas Morning News about the center say the management of the boys’ asylum cases seems chaotic, with boys unclear about processes such as their pending family reunions, deportation cases, or why they are being held.

“This is a humanitarian crisis in the convention center,”

said Josephine Lopez-Paul, Dallas Area Interfaith’s lead organizer, who did volunteer work at the convention center. Like others interviewed, Lopez-Paul was taken aback by the number of children, mostly from Guatemala and Honduras, kept in one massive gray hall of the convention center, their metal cots in neat rows.

The Dallas center was initially billed as a “decompression center” for children, and after it opened on March 17, it quickly filled to capacity, about 2,300 boys ages 13 to 17.

But many who have worked or volunteered there have described the pop-up detention center as inadequate and depressing for the children, though they acknowledge it’s better than conditions at the Border Patrol sites where they are initially processed after crossing the border seeking asylum in the U.S.

[Photo Credit: Dallas Visitor's Bureau]

Worries Rise About the Welfare of Migrant Teens in Dallas Emergency Shelter, Dallas Morning News [pdf]

Migrant Teens Held in Dallas Convention Center Feel Imprisoned, Dallas Observer [pdf]

Advocates Worried for Migrant Teens at Improvised Shelter, Arkansas Democrat Gazette [pdf]