How an L.A. humanitarian group is using soccer to help children stuck at Mexico border

REYNOSA, Mexico — Felicia Rangel-Samponaro never learned the little girl's name, but she remembers everything else about her.

Each time Rangel-Samponaro crossed the U.S. border to work with migrant children on the Mexican side, the 10-year-old would greet her with a hug and a smile, enthusiasm Rangel-Samponaro rewarded with books.

But that didn't last.

"It wasn't even a month before I watched her go from smiling and 'Hi Felicia!' to she stopped bathing, she stopped washing her hair," Rangel-Samponaro said.

Eventually she stopped coming all together.

You see what happens to a child, Rangel-Samponaro said, and you never forget.

She tells the story while sitting in the shady courtyard of a two-story storefront about a block from the Mexican side of a border the U.S. government has lined with razor wire. A few minutes earlier, a half-dozen children filled the patio, sitting on metal chairs at a folding table, going over school lessons with two teachers.

While politicians have implemented draconian ways to stem the flow of asylum seekers inundating the U.S.-Mexico border, Rangel-Samponaro is among those caring for the most innocent and desperate migrants — the children. More than four years ago she started the Sidewalk School, which has provided free education, medical care and food to more 800 children whose lives have been put on hold as their parents wait out the lengthy asylum process.

"When a child is seeking asylum, education stops for that child. You're sitting in these encampments for months, years," Rangel-Samponaro said. "A child needs to learn. But also focus on something else because they don't understand what's happening.

"Children are depressed, they're angry, they have all of these feelings. But they don't know how to let those feelings out in a constructive way."

It's a problem one school alone can't solve. Which is where soccer