Sister Norma Pimentel Was Fighting for Migrants and Refugees Long Before Trump Was Elected

They say that God works in mysterious ways, that you find him in the most unexpected places. He found Norma Pimentel in a Pizza Hut. It was the mid-1970s, and Pimentel was living at home with her parents after graduating from college. The daughter of two Mexican immigrants, she was born in Brownsville, a border city deep in the tip of Texas, and grew up in an era when travel between the two countries was easy and unremarkable.

As a girl, Pimentel was drawn to sketching and painting, so she went to college to study fine arts. After getting her bachelor’s degree, she wanted to travel and work as an artist, but her father, an auto electrician who ran his own repair shop, had other plans. “My dad wasn’t really happy about letting me just go off and explore the world and discover myself and my profession,” she says. “He wanted me to stay home and one day get married and be a teacher, or something like that.”That wasn’t the life Pimentel imagined for herself. So she decided to apply to graduate school, thinking she would study architecture. While she was waiting to hear back from the school she’d applied to, a friend reached out and said she was going to a prayer group. After the meeting, everyone was going to Pizza Hut.

Pimentel’s decision to join her proved pivotal. Before that day, Catholicism had really been more of her parents’ faith, not something she felt deeply in her own life. But through the prayer group, she started to experience God in more personal—and profoundly moving—ways. “Something happened, something changed in me, I guess,” she says. She became more and more involved in the church, until one day, her mom asked her a question she had been wondering herself: Are you going to become a nun, or what?

She was. In 1978, at the age of 24, Pimentel joined a convent, becoming Sister Norma Pimentel. “I ended up going to the prayer group just because I wanted to enjoy a nice pizza,” she says, laughing. Pimentel has cropped salt-and-pepper hair and an open, welcoming face. When she speaks, she does so lightly, in an accent unique to the region, but with a force and clarity that has made her famous in the Rio Grande Valley. I meet with her on a scorching, dusty day in July, on the wide-open campus of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. Pimentel is still an artist—she sketches and paints whenever she has time—and she sits on a couch in her spacious office under a portrait she’s drawn of Jesus. On the other side of her desk is a gallery wall, with framed articles, photos, and other works of art that reflect a career, or “calling,” as she refers to it, that has transformed her into one of the most important advocates for immigrants in the country. In the center of it all is a portrait of a mother and child she met after they emigrated from Honduras in 2014, their eyes large, vulnerable, and tinged with sadness. Beside it is a photo of her personally presenting the image to Pope Francis, a self-professed fan.

For over three decades, Pimentel has been working with migrants coming through the Rio Grande Valley—a region that, thanks to its proximity to the border, is frequently invoked in Washington’s internecine fights over immigration. In the 1980s, waves of refugees from Central American countries such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala began moving north to the United States, fleeing political violence and social upheaval in their home countries. In an effort to provide a safe space for them, the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville opened a shelter—Casa Oscar Romero, named for an archbishop who was assassinated in San Salvador in 1980. Pimentel, who worked at the shelter, is quoted in a New York Times article from 1986 defending the people who were staying at the casa, saying, “These are people coming to us because of the situation they find in their own countries. Many come after several days of travel without sleep, without food…. They need a place where they can rest, they can regain their strength, they can feel like human beings.” But the efforts were controversial: Some local officials felt that the shelter could be offering an incentive to the border crossers, and at least two workers for Casa Oscar Romero were criminally charged for transporting undocumented immigrants after they drove them in their cars. Ultimately, the shelter was shut down by request of the city government.

Undeterred, Pimentel found other ways of helping to provide humanitarian relief through the diocese. In 2004, she was asked to lead the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. Caring for immigrants is only one part of her job—the group also offers relief for victims of floods and other natural disasters, and summer programs to address food insecurity—but it is an important one. In 2014, when thousands of unaccompanied Central American children began arriving at the border, Pimentel led the efforts in the community, opening a respite center in downtown McAllen.

For the last 20 years, administrations from both parties have stepped up border security and deportation efforts. During his eight years in office, President Barack Obama deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president in history. But the Trump administration’s latest efforts make it the least tolerant toward un-documented immigrants and asylum seekers, both in rhetoric and policy. It began with then–presidential candidate Donald Trump in his official campaign kickoff announcement, proclaiming that Mexico was not “sending their best” people to our country. “They’re bringing drugs,” he said of the immigrants. “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Once in office, the president proved this wasn’t empty posturing—first with a ban against immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries. Then, in April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy for immigrants attempting to come into the country without government sanction. Going forward, immigrants who crossed the border illegally would be criminally prosecuted, even if they were seeking asylum.

Later that month, the New York Times reported that more than 700 children had been taken from their parents at the border as part of a strategy the administration said was meant to make immigrants think twice before trying to enter the country without a visa. (By June, it was reported that more than 2,300 children had been separated from their parents.) Reporters and immigration advocates began flooding the region, bringing stories of detention centers where children were being kept, in some cases, in prison like conditions. The United Nations human rights office called the practice a violation of international human rights laws.

Faced with a bipartisan backlash, the administration eventually backed down. In late June,
the president signed an executive order requiring families to be kept together in detention centers as they go through immigration proceedings. But it’s been hard to undo the damage: In July, the Trump administration admitted in a federal court filing that more than 450 parents may have been deported with-out their children, complicating efforts at reunifying them.

For Pimentel, the issue is not political. “People really, if you give them a choice, they would rather be home. They’d rather be with their family, their culture, their people, their customs,” she says. If politicians truly wanted a better immigration system in the United States, she thinks, they could make it happen. “The only way we can make it better as a country is to really try to look for solutions and not just stay with the problems. I don’t know that our country is really looking for solutions,” she tells me. “Our country is filled with people with great hearts and great possibilities and great potential…. The respite center is a response. It’s just one example of how we here in the United States can make things right.”

Hundreds gathered to protest the separation of incarcerated immigrant families and children in Texas.

Getty ImagesJoe Raedle

The morning after I meet Pimentel, I leave my hotel in McAllen and start driving toward the border. I want to see the place so frequently invoked by politicians 1,700 miles away in Washington as ground zero in the immigration fight. I head east, a busy highway stretch of hotel chains giving way to auto-repair shops and small family-owned restaurants, then south, where open fields are dotted with occasional factories and other businesses. Soon, the border crossing—known as the Hidalgo Port of Entry—looms ahead. In recent weeks, there had been reports of immigrants coming to the border crossing, only to be told once they arrived that the facilities meant to receive asylum seekers were full. They were camping on the border, hoping to be let in.

The Rio Grande Valley is now the busiest section of the countryfor the U.S. Border Patrol, which makes almost half of its border-crossing apprehensions here. In April, President Trump sent theNational Guard to the valley—a necessary measure, he said, to securethe border until his wall could be constructed. The month before,Congress approved $1.6 billion for border security, including 33 milesof new fencing in the Rio Grande Valley. It’s an area where, BorderPatrol officials say, they don’t have the resources and infrastructurein place to properly secure the border.

But that’s only one aspect of life in the region. In McAllen, 85percent of the residents are Hispanic, and the violent crime rates for the city and nearby Brownsville are among the lowest in Texas. City officials work in partnership with Pimentel and her team. Even the head of the Border Patrol for the region sings her praises. “I think one of the most important aspects of Sister Norma Pimentel is the way she lives her faith,” says Manuel Padilla Jr., Border Patrol sector chief for the Rio Grande Valley, in a video posted to a GoFundMe page by the Catholic Charities. “You talk about a pillar in the community when it comes to selfless service. Without Sister Norma and without the community engagement, our mission of border security would be a very difficult mission to achieve.”

The impetus for the respite center came in2014, with the influx of unaccompanied minors at the border. One day that year, Pimentel says, she started getting calls asking her what was going on at the bus station in McAllen. She decided to drive down to see for herself. “There were 200 of the min a bus station,” she remembers. “They were dirty, they were muddy, they were dehydrated. They were crying and children were on the floor, and it was quite chaotic.”

Pimentel quickly realized that a place was needed for the new arrivals to shower and rest. After being processed and released by immigration officials, many were trying to reach family or friends in other parts of the United States, where they would wait to have their hearing before an immigration court judge. They needed help arranging their travel. Pimentel thought of Sacred Heart parish hall, just a few blocks away from the bus station. She called the priest who oversaw the space and asked if she could borrow it for a few weeks.

Through this work, Pimentel became one of the few individuals to be granted access to the children being held in detention centers, which were created under the Obama administration. “I saw the children, and the conditions that they were in were so sad. You’re talking about 5, 6, 10 years old, all packed up like sardines into cells[where] they couldn’t lie down, not even sit down,” she says. “I cried with them.” They prayed together, and she did her best to comfort them, but their pleas stay with her to this day. “They would say, ‘Get me out of here, please. I can’t breathe—no puedo respirar.’ ”

It was a tragedy, but one that Americans were finally paying attention to. Donations poured in from across the country—so many that she had to stop accepting them for a time because they threatened to take over the respite center. The scene was chaotic. “But I call it holy chaos, because it was beautiful to see,” she says. They ended up moving to a larger commercial space last year. Each day, anywhere from dozens to more than 200 people who have been processed and released from federal authorities are dropped off near the re-spite center. From there, they come through the center to get help from the Catholic Charities. Donors and volunteers from southTexas have rallied around the center as a space where the focus is on helping immigrants and refugees.

Outside the doors of the respite center, there are signs warning reporters that they are not to interview any children and must be accompanied by a staff member at all times. Since news of the family-separation policy broke, reporters had been coming here, hoping to talk to people about their journeys. I’m there to meet Pimentel, so I go inside to wait. It’s just after 10 a.m., but there are already about 25 adults inside, most of them sitting in blue plastic chairs in the middle of the room. They’re waiting to meet with caseworkers sitting at long tables loaded down with colored markers, hand sanitizer, and printouts that read: “Please help me,I do not speak English. What bus do I need to take? Thank you for the help! :)” To their right, volunteers are stacking floor mats and blankets in the corner. In the far corner of the room, a young girl in long braided pigtails sits on a small stage, holding a pack of new socks. Behind her, on the wall, is a sign that says, “Volunteers are a blessing!” It’s framed by pieces of paper listing Montana, Arizona, Idaho, and other states from which volunteers have come to help. Behind where the adults sit, children lounge in a play area, watching a movie. Small plastic cups and toys are stacked on the shelves against the wall, near a Fisher-Price playhouse. Wooden hooks hold sparkly, bright-colored costumes for playing dress-up.

Pimentel arrives just after 10:30 a.m. to greet the visitors. She greets me warmly, too, but makes it clear that I shouldn’t approach any of the respite-center visitors unless they want to talk. A woman named Alma, who oversees daily operations, asks a few of the adults waiting for the caseworkers if they want to speak with me, but they look at her and say nothing. It’s a scary position to be in, coming to a new country and putting yourself at its mercy, especially during a time when the rhetoric has been so unwelcoming to immigrants and refugees. There have been reports of staff at detention centers warning asylum seekers not to speak to the press. The caseworkers and volunteers, it soon becomes evident, don’t want to talk, either. When I reach for my pen to try to get Alma’s last name, she grabs my arm and—as sweetly as she can—explains that she, too, doesn’t want to be interviewed. So many reporters have been asking them for interviews, she says, apologizing. They just want to focus on helping the people there who are in need. I can’t blame them. Looking around the room, I see the workings of a community, banding together to take care of its neighbors. It reminds me of what Pimentel had said the day before. “I always believe that we must not miss the opportunity to do the right thing,” she said. “And this is our chance to do it. Right now, today.”

This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of ELLE.

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