SOUTHLAKE, Texas _ While many are preparing for holiday celebrations, Elisa O'Callaghan is heading to Matamoros this month to teach children who are seeking asylum in the United States.
She will teach the children on Dec. 22, and O'Callaghan hopes she can teach once a month at the Sidewalk School, or Escuelita en la Banqueta.
"It's right before Christmas. I was excited, shocked and numb when I found out I would be teaching," she said.
O'Callaghan said she is working with the nonprofit, Team Brownsville, that provides food for the migrants waiting at the bridge and also operates the Sidewalk School.
The school, where volunteer teachers hold classes on an outdoor plaza, was formed in July to give children something to do. Teachers instruct children and adults in subjects including English, geography and math.
O'Callaghan said the Mexican government allows the school to open one day a week and added that she doesn't know how many children she will teach.
But she said she wants the children to express their feelings through art, and she wants to bring their work back to North Texas to display the drawings and paintings so that people understand their plight and so that she can help raise money to provide meals.
The children and adults who are seeking asylum must wait in Mexico until they have a court date to appear before a U.S. immigration judge under a Trump Administration program called the Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP.
Under the MPP, which is often referred to as the Remain in Mexico program and took effect in January, people who are seeking asylum must wait in Mexico for the duration of their legal proceedings.
When it's time for people who are seeking asylum to appear in court, they must travel to a port of entry, and when the hearing is over they are bused back to Mexico to wait until the next court date.
Melba Salazar-Lucio, who founded the Sidewalk School, said she started out with 20 children, and now at least 150 show up ready to learn.
Classes are taught outdoors, and there are no desks, tables or chairs, she said.
Volunteers teach 15-minute "mini lessons" in math, geography, science and other subjects. Some lessons are taught in Spanish, but some are also taught in English, or they are bilingual.
"It's just amazing to see how they learn; they are living in squalid conditions," Lucio said. "Moms dress kids in the best of whatever they have."
Salazar-Lucio said classes are taught on Sunday mornings, and she and other volunteers meet at the Brownsville bus station and walk two miles into Mexico pulling wagons full of books and other supplies.
The children now recognize Salazar-Lucio and the volunteers when they arrive.
O'Callaghan is gathering art supplies for her classes, and she wants to focus on having children draw in a memory book, paint using water colors and create their favorite animal.
"I want to bring back their expressions, their emotions to exhibit them to raise awareness," she said.
According to an article in Texas Monthly, when the detension center in Tornillo, near El Paso closed in January, a priest grew concerned that the U.S. government was going to throw away the drawings, paintings and 3-D models of the children's artwork.
Two history professors from the University of Texas at El Paso who founded the Museo Urbano, brought the children's artwork to the university to exhibit.
The children and their families are from Guatemala, Cuba, El Salvador and Venezuela, but Salazar-Lucio said she also sees people from Cameroon, and even some from China.
The people who come to volunteer their time to work with the children come from all over the United States. They are professors, attorneys, teachers and students.
Salazar-Lucio said she is having the children work on projects including writing books and writing letters to either Santa Claus or The Three Kings. Project Brownsville is also recruiting volunteers to provide gifts to the children based on their letters.
Teaching art is the most recent project that O'Callaghan is involved with to help the children. In August, O'Callaghan and other women from northeast Tarrant County and beyond started making dolls for the children.
They are called CALM or Creating a Loving Memory dolls.
The dolls proved to be so popular in Matamoros, that others have taken them to border crossings in Nogales and Tijuana.
O'Callaghan said she wants to bring a human touch to the children who are waiting in Mexico, unsure of their fate.
"Let them narrate their feelings. Let them become human again," O'Callaghan said.
