Migrant farmworkers staying the night at Our Lady of Guadalupe Shelter stand in line for dinner.
“I felt that we weren’t helping the people we set out to help and the mission had really changed,” Ingebrand-Pohlad said. “I cautioned the board that I was not in alignment with this new mission of taking anybody who knocks on the door. Whether they’re worthy or not — that wasn’t the point.” At markets near the shelter, foremen fill orange jugs with water for the day to provide for the laborers. Small groups clump together at Leon’s Meat Market, taking a chance that a foreman might need one of them for the day.
Manuel Mejia, 73, watches a movie on his cellphone while his clothes being washed in the laundry room of the shelter. The overnight shelter opened its doors in December 2017. Last year, Ingebrand-Pohlad said, an average of 90 people a night slept there. Ingebrand-Pohlad called the situation “heartbreaking,” but expressed concerns that immigration officers dropping off asylum seekers — who have become particular lightning rods under the Trump administration — would deter farmworkers, some of whom are undocumented, from staying there.
After dinner, Jose Luis Castro clutched his flip phone to his ear, listening intently as his daughter mentioned his granddaughter’s upcoming first communion. He told her to make a nice dinner, something to celebrate the occasion he’d be missing.
I agree with the donor. If the facility was meant to help farmworkers, the money should be spent on them. It's like donating to a sick child only to have the money used for someone else. Feel sad for those who depended on the shelter. Hope another donor steps in.
The shelter was started over a year ago, thanks in large part to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad.