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Single moms Catherin and Heidy see this year's Christmas holiday as a kind of "experiment," they say. Along with their five children, it's the women's first Christmas in Tucson since leaving their respective homes, in Guatemala and Venezuela, and traveling mostly by foot to reach the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year.
The two asylum seekers met at Tucson migrant-aid shelter Casa Alitas in March, after both women and their children -- ages 1, 5, 7, 11 and 15 -- fled violence and poverty in their home countries, and crossed through the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales to request asylum.
At Casa Alitas, Catherin and Heidy connected over the shared experience of trying to keep their children safe throughout their harrowing journeys to the border. They decided to move in together in Tucson in order to share child-care duties, so both women could work.
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Especially at this time of year, Catherin, 32, and Heidy, 35, say they desperately miss their families back home, and the traditional foods they usually eat during the holiday. For Catherin, Christmastime means roasted chicken and traditional hot, spiced fruit punch. For Heidy, it's Venezuelan tamales called hallacas, wrapped in banana leaves and filled with meat or vegetables.
They've warned their kids that "Santa Claus doesn't have much money this year," said Heidy, who's working for Door Dash in the daytime while Catherin watches the youngest kids, including Heidy's 1-year-old daughter Nazly. Catherin said she's still struggling to find a job with a schedule that works for their child-care arrangement.
But despite those stresses, both women say they're counting their blessings this year.
"At least I'm alive. My children are alive," Catherin said, speaking in Spanish at the women's shared apartment in central Tucson last week.
"And at least we're not all alone," Heidy said. The women asked that the Star only use their first names because of their uncertainty about how asylum cases will be handled under the incoming Trump administration.
They also say they owe their current stability to the efforts of Tucson humanitarian Dora Rodriguez, whom Catherin calls "an angel that God put in our path."
Rodriguez is the co-founder of migrant-aid nonprofit Salvavision. Funded solely by donations, Salvavision is assisting the women with their rent, food and other necessities as they wait for their asylum cases to proceed. The nonprofit also covered the $470 cost of each woman's work-authorization paperwork.
Heidy and Catherin are among about 50 asylum-seeking families getting support from Salvavision as they settle in Tucson. Those include more than 30 families from the border town of Sásabe, Sonora, where an outbreak of gang violence last year sent hundreds fleeing across the border to Arizona, Rodriguez said.
While the vast majority of asylum seekers who pass through Casa Alitas leave Tucson after a day or two, joining family or sponsors elsewhere in the U.S., about 1% of them have settled here, according to Pima County.
Salvavision also does binational work, most recently assisting migrants who have been rapidly deported to Nogales, Sonora under the Biden administration's June order restricting access to asylum.
"We move where the need is," said Rodriguez, who has made it her life's work to help immigrants like herself since she nearly died at age 19 crossing the Southern Arizona desert.
In 1980, Rodriguez was part of a group of 26 people fleeing El Salvador's civil war who were abandoned by their guide in the July heat. Thirteen of them died before Border Patrol agents found the survivors, including Rodriguez, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Christmas is an opportunity to remember that migration to protect one's family has been a reality throughout human history, Rodriguez said.
"This is not a new story," she said. "This is a story that has been around for thousands of years -- that people move if they are not safe, if they need to give their family a different kind of life."
'Beloved children of God'
On Sunday afternoon, about 25 asylum-seeking families gathered for Salvavision's Christmas party, held at a church in South Tucson.
Dozens of children, including Heidy and Catherin's youngest, sat before a manger scene to listen to the biblical Christmas story, as told by Catholic priest Ray Riding.
Speaking alternately in English and Spanish, Riding led the children through a prayer and told them, "You are the beloved children of God."
Riding said that is the message he hopes the children internalize, especially at a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.
"The Christmas gift is not about things," he said. "It's about God's love for you. ... If they live with that message, then today is a success."
Riding, who recently returned from 17 years of ministering in central Mexico, said he's been taken aback to hear church-goers criticize humanitarian efforts to provide water to people crossing the desert, arguing the travelers deserve whatever happens to them.
That attitude is the antithesis of God's message, he said.
"Jesus said, 'What God wants is a merciful heart,'" Riding said, citing the Book of Matthew: "I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me."
In the Bible, Mary and Joseph were immigrants, just like those traveling to the U.S. border today, he said.
Speaking with new arrivals at the border wall, "I listen to their stories, and it touches me deeply," Riding said. "It makes me even more committed to walk with them, in the sense that Jesus did. Now I say, where's my church? The wall. And who are my parishioners? The immigrants. I feel called to be a voice for them."
Asylum seekers assisted by Salvavision have been through traumas many can't imagine, Rodriguez said. Salvavision's programming, including a summer camp for children of asylum seekers, is aimed at giving those children a chance to just be kids again, she said.
Later at Salvavision's Christmas party, children ate Christmas treats, opened donated presents and took turns swinging a bat at festive piñatas filled with candy. Each time another child stepped up to bat, all the others broke into a traditional piñata song to encourage them.
Rodriguez was watching one young boy in particular from Sásabe, Sonora. The boy witnessed his uncle get shot in the front seat of the vehicle the boy was riding in, before their family fled the escalating violence between organized crime groups in the small border town.
But at least for these moments, the boy's face was filled with joy, she said.
"He looked so beautiful, just smiling, beating up the piñata," she said. "Each kid on this journey has a story. They're working through this trauma."
Coping together
Catherin and Heidy's two-bedroom apartment is modest, but warm and cozy. On a recent December evening, a small artificial Christmas tree from the Dollar Tree illuminated a corner of their living room with small white lights.
Catherin's 5-year-old son Cristian played on the floor with Heidy's smiling 1-year-old daughter Nazly, who the women joke has become the lady of the house, bossing around the older boys.
At 2 months old, strapped to her mother's chest, Nazly and her 15-year-old brother Heilyker accompanied their mom through the deadly Darién Gap, more than 60 miles of dense rainforest and swamp that connects Colombia and Panama.
In 2023, more than 520,000 migrants crossed the Darién Gap, double the figure from 2022, according to Panamanian government data. Nearly two-thirds of them were from Venezuela, which is experiencing the largest-ever forced displacement crisis in Latin America due to "rampant violence, inflation, gang warfare, soaring crime rates, and shortages of food, medicine and essential services," the UN Refugee Agency said.
Heidy said the terrifying 3.5-day trek through the Darién Gap, passing dead bodies along the way, was the worst part of their journey through six countries to reach the Nogales port of entry. She recalled a moment on the second day of the journey when they had to cross a stretch of slippery wet rock, with a steep drop-off on either side.
Heidy said she was paralyzed by the fear she would slip and take her baby with her. But neither did she trust the fellow travelers who offered to hold Nazly as she crossed. Weak with hunger and frozen in place, Heidy said she felt like she was having a nervous breakdown. But eventually, she grasped a rope attached to the other side of the slippery pass and made it across.
The decision to take such a risky journey wasn't made lightly; Heidy and Catherin both say they left their homes out of necessity.
"It's not like many think. To decide to go and leave everything behind isn't easy, to leave everything you've built," Catherin said. "But you have to protect your children."
Catherin recalled clinging to her three boys while riding for days atop a train known as "The Beast" as they crossed Mexico, shaking in the cold and praying they didn't fall into the white void that seemed to encircle the train, as a heavy fog settled over them. One night, Mexican immigration authorities forced the migrants riding the train to disembark, shortly before a truck full of armed men arrived, she said.
Catherin and her sons hid themselves in a nearby grape field, trembling as they watched the armed men kidnap two other migrant families, she said.
Women like Catherin and Heidy exemplify the lengths people will go to protect their children, Rodriguez said.
"We're not different," she said. "These women are so resilient and strong and willing to survive in a place that they never knew, with just a small support from others."
Although they don't have much, this year's Christmas is all about gratitude for having survived and making plans for the future, Catherin said.
"They say when there's life, there's hope," she said.
Contact reporter Emily Bregel at [email protected]. On X, formerly Twitter: @EmilyBregel
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