Church Shelter for Refugees in Texas Is Closed

A shelter that has housed thousands of Central American refugees in the last four years closed Thursday, and more than 500 of its residents faced an uncertain fate.

The remaining refugees from Casa Romero reported to a nearby Immigration and Naturalization Service center. INS officials said a decision would be made individually on whether they would be deported, placed in a detention center or released.

Since the Brownsville Roman Catholic Diocese opened the shelter in December, 1982, it had housed, clothed and fed more than 10,000 people, most of them from El Salvador and Guatemala.

Inundated by complaints from neighbors who said the shelter was overcrowded and that its residents were harassing passers-by in the residential area, city officials in August asked the church to relocate the shelter.

Deadline for Move

About 300 men living at Casa Romero were moved on Sept. 22 to the Cameron County Live Stock Show exhibition hall in San Benito, leaving 200 women and children behind. The city gave the diocese until Saturday to move out.

Church officials said their efforts to relocate the shelter had been frustrated, forcing them to close Casa Romero, at least temporarily.

Volunteers at the shelter swept the floors and cleaned breakfast tables Thursday for the last time.

“I have no idea what’s going to happen to us now,” Maria Benitez, 45, of El Salvador said as she, her 72-year-old mother and five children prepared to board a bus that would take them to the INS center in Harlingen.

Three chartered buses shuttled the residents from Casa Romero and the livestock grounds to the Harlingen INS office.