She did not want to leave her mother behind in Venezuela, but Trinidad Kei Herrera, 24, and her husband were determined to build a safe, healthy life for their four children — an unlikely scenario under President Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial reign. So she, like millions of other mothers, looked north to the United States.
“I really decided to migrate because we didn’t have a proper job — and my dad got sick, he got cancer, and we were desperate,” she said in Spanish while her children, ages 2 through 6, played together in a large, vacant lot on the Southeast Side of San Antonio.
Though she did not expect or choose to land in Texas — the shelter in California where the Herreras were processed bought them plane tickets to San Antonio, instead of New York City, where she thought the immigration process would be easier — she’s glad she found Roca de Refugio (or Rock of Refuge) Church.
“Here I am, because of God — because he brought me here,” she said. Now she’s considering staying in San Antonio if she’s allowed. “I don’t want to move anymore. Unless, God willing, I go back to my country.”
The Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, which is housing Roca de Refugio, has seen dwindling attendance, especially since the pandemic. Officials with both groups and others now are looking to use their resources in new ways to help the community they serve.
The Herrera family, for example, has a long and complicated path ahead of them for long-term residency or citizenship — a path that might get longer and more difficult, if not impossible, under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
For now, the Herrera family lives in a “shelter network,” essentially various motel rooms, churches as well as spare rooms in volunteers’ homes and casitas. The network has been cobbled together by Nuevos Vecinos, a nonprofit founded by Mennonite Pastor Dianne Garcia, who also founded Roca de Refugio, and various nonprofit partners and congregations.
In San Antonio, “there’s a lot of Spanish-speaking churches, and there’s a lot of churches that serve immigrants, but there weren’t churches — at least that I knew of — where it was specifically the mission of the church, the identity of the church, was to create a place of family and belonging for immigrants,” Garcia said of the church and nonprofit she started in April 2023. A child of immigrants herself, she has three families living in her own home.
“As opposed to a place of charity for immigrants, [Roca de Refugio is a] place where they could receive help, but more importantly, could participate in co-creating that space and in giving back to others,” she said.
Roca de Refugio first started operating as a nondenominational church out of The Arsenal Church in Southtown and moved into the much larger Good Shepherd Lutheran Church off Goliad Road in late July.
The Lutheran congregation is aging and fewer people are interested in going to the church since the pandemic, said Pat Jasso, president of the church’s council. Even before the pandemic, Sunday services would see “maybe 50” people, Jasso said. Now, it’s more like a dozen.
“We don’t want to let Good Shepard die,” Jasso said, so the council started looking for ways to reactivate the underutilized space. “We just want to do something for the community and want to be a presence, because there’s a lot of need in this community.”
Good Shepherd lends its facilities to Roca de Refugio, now a Mennonite Church, and The Praise Church, a nondenominational, largely Congolese congregation. SASports hosts weekly Zumba classes, Roca de Refugio runs a donation closet, a private provider runs an on-site day care and a basketball team rents the gym.
There’s more activity in the space now, but that’s just the very beginning of ambitious dreams for the property, Jasso said.
Jasso and Garcia envision a “neighborhood plaza” that could mean combining housing, worship and other resources, including language and job training, recreation, health care, office space and other entrepreneurial opportunities for anyone seeking to improve their financial situation. That means both citizens and migrants.
They call it the Goliad Road Community of Promise.
The ‘promise’
Jasso was connected to Garcia through the nonprofit Impact Guild’s Good Acres workshop series, which is aimed at connecting churches with redevelopment opportunities.
Between the sanctuary and mixed-use space, Good Shepherd has 35,000 square feet of buildings and 2 acres of undeveloped land — the vacant lot where the Herrera children played.
“There’s something great here, but how can we bring it into a new chapter?” said Ramiro Gonzales, the former Prosper West CEO who was hired as a consultant by Impact Guild/Good Acres to help develop a plan for the property.
Impact Guild and the Goliad Road Community of Promise, a separate nonprofit led by Garcia, has started hosting community meetings to figure out what necessities and amenities the area needs, Gonzales said.
“Who are the other resource partners that can be here and serve this immediate community, but then grow it beyond that?” he said. “Part of what came from the discussion is not simply being a community center that just has resources and that’s it, but really how do you build community, and how do you really be an asset for change in the area?”
The church property has the potential to become an “economic mobility campus,” Gonzales said.
If the Lutheran church can lease out more space to partners, that revenue can subsidize free or low-cost programming, said Jasso, who has previously served on numerous boards and commissions including San Antonio Water System. She now serves on the Bexar County Hospital District board of managers and the board of Brooks Development Authority.
She hopes the church’s redevelopment could provide similar economic gains — though likely on a smaller scale — as the former Brooks Air Force Base has for the South Side.
As the specifics of the plan are still under development with the community, there is not a solid timeline or budget for the project, Jasso said. She expects a fundraising campaign will be needed along with local, state or federal grants.
The Impact Guild/Good Acres plans on working with 20-30 churches over the next year and plans on using Goliad Road Community of Promise as a model to develop more community campuses across the city, Gonzales said.
Historically, projects that house migrants or add residential density to a neighborhood have received some backlash across the city.
Jasso said she’s ready for the not-in-my-backyard crowd or other critics about this approach. The church wants to survive, the city is in a housing crisis and the immigrant community is already here.
“I am ready to say: Well, what are you doing about it?” she said.
Once a more solid plan emerges from community meetings, Gonzales said there will be education and awareness efforts surrounding the goals of the Goliad Road Community of Promise.
“I think there will need to be some very intentional conversations with community about all the other things besides the housing that are happening here,” he said.
Putting in the work
Garcia, who left the San Antonio Mennonite Church in 2022 as an associate pastor, was initially denied a request last year to plant and pastor a new congregation focused on serving migrants.
This summer, Roca de Refugio became affiliated with a different conference in the Mennonite denomination, allowing Garica to again become a licenced Mennonite pastor.
Still, she shies away from claiming authority.
“I’m facilitating what’s happening in this community, but I’m not in charge,” she said. “The families hold the ownership of the community.”
While Herrera and her husband wait for their work permits to come through — which could take weeks or months — they assist Garcia with tasks around the church’s property. Her husband has a complicated medical condition that, for now, prohibits him from obtaining a work permit.
On Thursday, she was assembling a small, mobile chicken coop in preparation for eight chickens that Garcia delivered on Saturday. Ultimately, the church wants to give their eggs to neighbors who need them.
“I’ve been trying to put it together for 2 days,” she said, hands on her hips with a smile
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country over the past decade, according to the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants of Venezuela. Roughly 545,000 are in the U.S. as of June.
“It’s possible that in the future, God might have planned for [me] to go back to [my] country,” Herrera said. She misses her mother, who could not make the trip, but fears what will happen to her if she returns to Maduro’s Venezuela.
For now, she’s happily building a chicken coop in the city she calls home.
“I do believe that bringing immigrant families and supporting them into stability is good for everyone, it’s not just good for them,” Garcia said. “It’s good for everyone when there is diversity.”