Father Brian Strassburger, SJ, is a Jesuit priest who serves in the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas. He resides near the US-Mexico border, where he responds to the pastoral needs in the area, with a particular focus on the migrant community on both sides of the border.

He is also the director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, a new ministry of the US Central and Southern Jesuit province that started in 2021 after a visit of their provincial to the border.

The provincial saw the acute need along the border; therefore, he invited Father Brian Strassburger, SJ, and Father Louie Hotop, SJ, to come and see how they could respond to the pastoral needs in the area. Their local bishop, Daniel Flores, gave them the charge that has been the impulse of their mission since their meeting when he said:

“I want you to do what I think Jesuits do best. I want you to read the reality and respond to it.”

Father Brian Strassburger, SJ,  agreed to an interview with JRS CANADA to speak about his ministry. This is the first part of a series of articles that will be released from this talk, which has been edited for brevity.

JRS Canada: As a Jesuit priest residing near the US-Mexico border, what are your daily activities as you accompany migrant communities in this area?

Fr. Brian Strassburger, SJ: Our ministry is in migrant camps and shelters on the US side in Texas and on the Mexican side in the state of Tamaulipas.

It is a primarily sacramental and pastoral ministry. We visit migrant camps and shelters, and we celebrate mass. We bring our own mass kit and a folding table that becomes our altar. We invite people to gather with some chairs or benches. We ask people to join us in prayer and the celebration of the sacraments.

Celebrating Mass in shelters opens other possibilities for us as we get to know people at the shelters that we’re visiting, because we build a trusted relationship with them as priests. This opens the possibility for pastoral conversations as people share where they’re at, what they’re going through, the personal struggles that they have in their life, and where they’re coming from, or what they might be fleeing from. What begins with the celebration of the sacraments and the Mass builds a trusted relationship that allows us to then pass information in both directions.

Mass is celebrated for migrants at the US-Mexico border by Fr.Flavio Bravo, SJ.

What does that look like? First, we’re able to provide some orientation on border politics with migrants. We can help explain border policies and dispel rumours that can pass through the migrant community, often shared through social media. We can advise them against frauds that might be trying to take advantage of them. In other words, we become a trusted source of information for migrants. And then, because we have close relationships with migrants, accompanying them pastorally, we become a trusted source of information for advocates, human rights organizations, legislators, and journalists. We share with them the on-the-ground reality that we encounter based on what migrants share with us.

Where we visit and how often we visit is very flexible and open-ended. We don’t run a migrant shelter. We live in a community as Jesuits, but we are a mobile team, so we go where migrants are. The reality on the border during this administration has changed the nature of our work, because where migrants are has changed. We have to be constantly discerning where the needs are the greatest, and how we can respond to them.

Along with our sacramental and pastoral ministry, we also bring humanitarian aid, such as donations, especially for hygiene products, cleaning supplies, and items for the kitchen.  In cold weather months, we bring appropriate clothing like hats, gloves, warm socks, and sweatshirts.

Also, we engage in advocacy efforts at a national level and on a local level, advocating for migrants for their needs, including immigration reform and policy change.

Moreover, we have our communications efforts to help share our ministry and the reality we encounter. That includes a newsletter and a podcast, the Jesuit Border Podcast. We also give presentations when we’re asked to, and we speak with journalists when they have inquiries about what’s going on along the border.

We also welcome groups that come down here to the Rio Grande Valley to hear a presentation from us or to join us in our ministry if they’re interested.

So, as you can see, those are a lot of the other things that we also do that are components of our ministry here at Del Camino. The heart of it is being a mobile team of Jesuits who visit migrant camps and shelters for sacramental ministry and pastoral accompaniment. But then there are so many other layers and components beyond that.

Father Brian Strassburger, SJ, blessing migrants with Holy water.

JRS Canada: What are their living conditions like in the area?

Fr. Brian Strassburger, SJ: The living conditions are not ideal, to say the least, and they differ by shelter. An example of good shelter conditions is a place that has rows of bunk beds in a big room, so you get to sleep in a bed, hopefully with some climate control system so you can turn on a heater in the cold weather or A/C in the hot weather. A good shelter will feed you three meals a day. And you will have access to bathrooms with flush toilets and showers.

But, I should also say that even a good shelter might be inadequately staffed, and so migrants staying there would have to contribute. They might have to cook and clean and maintain the shelter if it is understaffed. A good shelter will likely have some security personnel, along with the team of people that help manage it, but most of the everyday operation has to be taken care of by the migrants themselves who are there.

Even the nicest shelters can feel very much like a prison because the cities that they’re in are so unsafe and are often being watched by local cartels to kidnap migrants. Sometimes it can be unsafe to leave to go shopping or to go out and work if you’re trying to get a job temporarily while you’re staying in the shelter.

Also, if you’re a married couple, the husband and wife are separated; men are in the men’s dorm, and the wife and kids are in the women and children’s dorm. A mother might even be sharing the bed with her children. Those are the best shelters that I have seen, so even the best shelters have their drawbacks.

Shelters at the US-Mexico border visited by members of JRS in 2025.

What do other shelters look like? One of the shelters in our area is just a big concrete wall built around a couple of baseball fields. And it’s got a few casitas, a few of these little houses that are basically just four wooden walls with a tin roof where they lay a mattress on the ground, and that’s where people sleep and keep their belongings. Other people in that shelter sleep in tents because there isn’t enough space in the casitas. In a shelter like this, there is no climate-controlled help when it gets too cold or too warm. All this exposure to the elements can be extremely uncomfortable.

In a shelter like that, you might have one or two meals a day. Again, you have to help cook and clean around the shelter. As a migrant, you probably have portable toilets that you’re using for your bathrooms. Also, you might have to pay to charge your phone because you might not have access to electricity to be able to charge your phone.

In shelters like that one, what bothers people most is the weather, the bugs, and the mice. You can get rats and mice that run rampant in these shelters, running around at night, searching for another to eat, and chewing holes into your tent and belongings. Also, the bugs are constant, whether it’s flies when you’re trying to eat a meal or mosquitoes that come out especially after it’s rained. There’s no escape from these things. Those are the things that are constantly on the minds of migrants living in some of these shelters.

JRS Canada: Up until the change in the US administration, migrants in this area hoped to enter the United States legally. They used an app that would allow them to get an appointment, and they waited for months in the area. That was their goal. Can you tell us what they are hoping for now?

In the last two years of the Biden administration, there was a legal pathway of entry for migrants coming through Mexico. You could download a smartphone app called CBP One, create an account, and ask for an appointment daily. When you got an appointment, you could legally enter the United States and be given a temporary parole to be in the country. On January 20^th, when the new administration took over, they shut down that app and cancelled every appointment that had been scheduled with the app. Since then, vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers have been closed off to any access to the United States. An executive order has declared that the US-Mexico border is under invasion, and because of that, we do not have to receive anybody, even people with legitimate asylum claims. And so that’s the reality we’re facing right now.

Migrants who were in shelters when the administration took over were left with basically four possibilities to consider.

One option would be to pay a human smuggler to help them sneak into the US without detection (to get them undocumented in the United States). The going rate for that is between 12,000 and 15,000 U.S. dollars per person. It’s extremely expensive, and they only get one attempt at it. If it doesn’t work [and they are apprehended by border partrol], they could get deported or detained. And if it does work, the best-case scenario is being undocumented in the United States, where they can’t even get a work permit or have any legal status in the country. It’s not ideal. Very few people can afford it or even want to try it, and many of the people we know in shelters want to do things the right way.

A second option is to return to their home country. You’ve invested all this money, and you’ve made this plan. You might have family that is waiting for you in the United States. You might have a job lined up for you. But suddenly, there’s no legal way for you to get there. So, some people have had to make the decision to abandon this plan and return to their home country, despite what they’ve invested in the decisions they’ve made and the situations they’re leaving that propelled their journey. We’ve known people who have done that. Of course, for some people, that’s not an option. They’re fleeing for their lives, and so they cannot go back to their home country.

The US-Mexico border was visited by JRS staff in February 2025.

A third option is to try to establish yourself in Mexico for the time being. People are looking to regularize their status in Mexico. That is to say, they are looking for work and a place to live and enrolling their kids in school. Most of the people doing that are relocating to bigger cities in Mexico, like Monterrey, Guadalajara, or Mexico City, where there’s more opportunity for work. We’ve heard some success stories of people who found a place to rent that’s affordable and have gotten jobs and are making their way forward. We’ve known other people who have been frustrated. They can’t get their paperwork finished. They aren’t able to find any work, and so there continues to be a very vulnerable situation.

For some people, none of these other options are viable.

A fourth option is that they are still in shelters in northern Mexico. Now it has been over three months since the administration has changed, yet some people remain stuck in shelters. It might be a single mother who’s got young kids that she’s caring for, so she can’t go out to work because her young kids aren’t school age yet. It might be families who were kidnapped when they arrived at the border and had all their documents stolen. So maybe they’re Venezuelan, and now they have no Venezuelan documents, and so they can’t even regularize their status in Mexico without any documents showing their proof of identity. And the Venezuelan consulate isn’t the most helpful or rapid in responding to Venezuelan citizens who are in Mexico.

People in this situation are just in a holding pattern, trying to wait and see if there’s something that they can do or something that changes. So those are the four options available to migrants.

Where is their hope? I mean their hope for entry into the United States has been diminished substantially.

You know, there are some lawsuits in the courts declaring some of the policies of this administration to be unconstitutional. Those could initiate some change in border policy. But that could take months or years to get through the courts. Or, who knows, will the administration see how much we depend on migrant labour and have a change of opinion and a change of policy? It seems highly improbable, but this administration has been known to drastically shift on policy positions. Could any of those possibilities provide some amount of hope?

What I mostly find is that migrants don’t place their hope in the president, the United States, or border policy; they place their hope in God.

And that’s a hope that doesn’t disappoint. And so, they trust that this has a reason.
God’s got a plan, and things are going to work out in God’s time, even if that’s not the time that we had imagined or set out for ourselves. What gives them strength is their faith.

Del Camino Ministries with migrants at the US-Mexico border.

That’s why we find our sacramental ministry and pastoral accompaniment so fundamental, because US border policy can be cruel and downright unjust and create real suffering. But we have a God who suffered. A God who came and suffered and died to save us from sin and to death and to offer us salvation. We put our trust in the Lord, knowing that there will be suffering in this life and a lot of it is caused through the fall, through human sin, but that the Lord walks with us even through our suffering, and he gives us the grace to continue forward.

Stay tuned for Part II of this series!