A haven for farmworkers has its funding withdrawn when asylum-seekers began to arrive
MECCA, Calif. - The Our Lady of Guadalupe Shelter doesn't seem like much, but for the migrant farmworkers who descend on this impoverished desert town, it's a welcome retreat from the fields and dirt parking lots they once called home.
In this renovated grape packing plant in the eastern Coachella Valley, farmworkers rise before the sun, wipe thin foam mattress pads with a rag sprayed with disinfectant and rest their folded black cots against the walls of what used to be the walk-in refrigerator.
Outside, illuminated by a half moon, they rummage through metal lockers that will store their lives for the next several months, packed almost to bursting with towels, blankets, clothes and dirt-caked boots.
The shelter was started a little over a year ago, thanks in large part to hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad. It was her way of meeting a dire need for the farmworkers, who pick table grapes, lettuce, bell peppers and other crops.
