Francis Pauc, a member of Racine’s St. Rita Parish, traveled to the El Paso, Texas border to fully immerse himself in the experience of refugees. 

He traveled with 14 others as a part of the Catholic Coalition for Migrants and Refugees group (CCMR). While there, they visited both the El Paso border and Juarez, Mexico. 

He said he saw suffering worse than he ever could have imagined. 

“These people are living in tents, and many of these migrants and asylum-seekers are from Central America or southern Mexico; places where people have no experience at all with cold weather and many of them are women and children,” Pauc said in an interview with the Catholic Herald. “They have fled in terror from their homes and now they are stuck on the wrong side of the US/Mexico border. They can’t go forward and they can’t go back, so they sit and freeze.”

Pauc said that he does not feel that the United States should have open borders, but that there has to be a better solution. 

“Every nation has the right and responsibility to control its borders, but the question is how much each country does that. Back in 1980, I was stationed at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I went to Nogales, Mexico, quite often. The border was open then and there was no problem,” he said. “Why do we have problems now? We can control the flow of people into the United States in a fair and rational way. We don’t have to militarize the whole thing.”

After the trip and taking a 40-hour course on immigration, Pauc described the United States immigration policies as chaotic. He said that the solution is for Congress to pass a comprehensive reform package. 

“Enforcement by itself is ineffective. The wall will achieve nothing,” he said. “Why are people walking all the way across Mexico to get out of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador? If citizens of these countries felt safe at home, they would stay where they are.”