Two thousand asylum seekers from Central and South America find themselves in New York City due to a billion-dollar initiative by the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to reduce the smuggling of drugs and weapons in Texas. This has unwittingly resulted in increasing the strain on New York’s social service system to accommodate people with basic needs.
Concerns have been raised around the nature of the entire operation, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams has called it a humanitarian crisis. The situation shows little sign of improving and to that, the members of the art community have answered the call and rallied to collect aid.
Artists Guadalupe Maravilla and Mariana Parisca have set up a GoFundMe page calling for donations of funds, food, and toiletries, to be delivered to the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Brooklyn.
On the other hand, Maravilla’s gallery, PPOW in Tribeca, is acting as a drop-off site for donated goods, from prepaid subway passes to clothes and old cell phones, between September 15 and September 17.
“Texas Governor is using asylum seekers as political pawns against sanctuary cities,” the artists’ GoFundMe page reads. “They are now arriving in New York City, where shelters are already overwhelmed. Hundreds of families are being sent from Texas without food, water, medical care, or hygiene supplies for a 45-hour bus drive.”
Parisca and Maravilla, who arrived from El Salvador to New York as a refugee in the 1980s, are working with Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz. Ruiz leads the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Brooklyn and is a well-known advocate for undocumented immigrants.
Maravilla sums up the entire situation aptly, by saying “The work we are doing at the church as volunteers with zero resources is to welcome them and give them warm meals and care that they need. The church is not structured to hold large amounts of people; the toilets and stove have broken down twice. We have been making repairs and improvising from donations we raised. We don’t have beds, pillows, or blankets. The food is being prepared by volunteers. We need an overnight security guard among many other things.”
