Big Differences In Small Packages

The screech of packing tape being stretched across the flaps of a cardboard box could be heard through the door of Kathryn Bermudez’s studio apartment in East Hampton on a recent Wednesday night.

Ms. Bermudez answered the door a moment later, then rushed back to the box, which was so full of donated clothing that it would not stay closed. Ms. Bermudez herself was so full of emotion over the journey she would soon be taking to that she admitted to crying in recent days.

Ms. Bermudez, her husband, Francis Rodriguez, and their 4-year-old daughter, Nicole, would be heading to Dilley, Tex., in a rented moving truck to bring those boxes of clothes to asylum seekers at an immigration detention center for women and children.

The petite 25-year-old raced around her apartment, which was stuffed not just with boxes of clothing destined for needy children but also with her family’s own overnight bags.

Back in August, Ms. Bermudez organized a back-to-school clothing drive to support local families whose kids needed new clothing. The response was overwhelming, and after helping 34 families in the East Hampton area in September, she still had donations left over. Around that time, she learned about the increasing number of women and children crossing the border fleeing the gang violence, political corruption, and social unrest that are rampant in Central American nations such as Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras right now.

In October, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees warned that such violence was “fueling a looming refugee crisis in the Americas that demands urgent and concerted action by states of the region.” In a release, the U.N.H.C.R. pointed to government statistics showing that “82 percent of the 16,077 women from these countries who were interviewed by U.S. authorities in the last year were found to have a credible fear of persecution or torture” and were allowed to pursue asylum status.

The news opened Ms. Bermudez’s eyes, and her ears, too — she could hear the stories of women and children who arrived in the U.S. as refugees and made their way here in recent months, stories told first-person at a local laundromat of people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other health problems related to either the situation they fled or the circumstances of their arrival in the U.S. There is at least one such child in the East Hampton School District, school officials recently confirmed.

Helping just made sense to Ms. Bermudez.

“I’m a mother. What can I do as a mother? I don’t have money resources,” she said before her trip. “But I know with my willingness I can do a lot of different things. We can make a big difference in their lives even if we don’t have anything.”

Ms. Bermudez was guided in her efforts by two people she knew, Daniel Hartnett, a bilingual social worker at the East Hampton Middle School who had volunteered in early September at the South Texas Family Residential Center, and Isabel Saavedra, an East Hampton High School graduate and attorney who spent several months working with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project in Dilley, before moving to Washington, D.C., last month.

Mr. Hartnett and Ms. Saavedra helped Ms. Bermudez work out a plan to take the clothing donations as well as toys donated by the Rainbow School in Bridgehampton and medical supplies she was able to purchase through a raffle and an empanada sale she and her family and friends ran as fund-raisers. Jose Rodriguez and Kristina Rodriguez, a father-and-daughter duo who own a popular Southampton restaurant, La Hacienda, sponsored transportation to and from Texas, and Mr. Rodriguez traveled with Ms. Bermudez and her family to provide extra manpower.

They departed on Nov. 11 and drove to Dilley nonstop. While in Texas, the Bermudez family and Jose Rodriguez worked not at the detention center but at a nearby Mennonite convent, La Casa de Maria y Marta, which housed close to 90 recently released immigrant women and children who were hoping to restart their lives in the U.S.

“They looked so frightened, and they were so young,” Ms. Bermudez recalled, while sitting down to plates of nachos, quesadillas, and sopes at La Hacienda after they returned from their trip on Nov. 16.

She described distributing the clothes they had brought, but their work did not stop there. Francis Rodriguez and Jose Rodriguez revamped the convent’s playroom by buying a new TV and installing it on one wall, and they arranged for newer, nicer couches to be donated. The toys were a hit, too.

“Those children’s smiles, they were so happy. Their faces will never leave my mind,” Ms. Bermudez said.

“There was so much energy,” Francis Rodriguez said. “It impacted me. It changed me and opened my mind to a different reality.”

“This trip was a blessing,” Ms. Bermudez added, and pledged to continue helping. “We will be back to bring more toys and more happiness.”

Mr. Hartnett, who knew Ms. Bermudez while she was a student in the East Hampton school system, said he was proud of her efforts. “This young woman here, she’s had her good days and her bad days, and she has reached into her heart,” he said. “Her generosity has come from compassion.”

Ms. Bermudez is a few college semesters away from obtaining a degree as an architect, but now, she thinks she might redirect her career toward social work or launch a nonprofit. She said her next project will be collecting hygiene products to send to La Casa de Maria y Marta.

“It started as something so small,” she said. “I just wanted to help two families I met at the park on a Sunday in August. This has been a big journey and it has opened my eyes to so many things. We have so many ways we can help people, but we have to act as a community. That’s how I see it. If we all chip in a little, we can make a big difference.”