Hundreds of families line the banks of the Rio Grande at the base of Mount Cristo Rey, separated by a shallow flow of water, and joined by a plywood bridge with a platform in the middle. In small groups on each side, they come down from the banks to meet in the middle for a few minutes. Some laugh and some cry as they hold each other tight for a brief reunion; time enough to make plans, catch up and greet new additions to the family. 

Behind a wall of razor wire on the United States side of the river, students from Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque watch the reunions, their faces mirroring the laughter and tears of the families. 

“Honestly, this trip… a lot more emotional than I thought it was going to be,” Ruth Chavez, one of the students, says later. “My grandma immigrated from Mexico, and I think watching today really just set me down, because she hasn’t seen her brother in like 25 years”

Chavez’s experience reflected that of the family members, including Hector Hernandez, who came with his nine-year-old daughter Caroline. He was there to reunite with his sister, who he hasn’t seen since moving to El Paso from Juarez 26 years ago. This would be Caroline’s first time meeting her aunt in person.

All the students from the Albuquerque private school — seniors enrolled in advanced Spanish-language classes — are volunteering at an event called Hugs not Walls, run by the Border Network for Human Rights, an El Paso-based organization that advocates for immigration reform in West Texas and southern New Mexico. Among other activities, the students will help with a puppet show depicting the reunification of a family at the border, put on by the Kitchen Table Puppets + Press. 

The students are in El Paso on a Saturday in early November for a border immersion program run by Iglesia Luterana Cristo Rey, an El Paso church that sits in a low-income Hispanic district. The Hugs not Walls event was one stop among several others: the students visited the Walmart memorial — which marks the site of a 2019 mass shooting of 23 people by a man with anti-immigrant motives — met with migrants and refugees to better understand the situation at the divide between the U.S. and Mexico, and went to a Dia de los Muertos parade in downtown Las Cruces.

“Being at the border today was different, because it felt very dystopian,” student Matilda Diggelman told me. “But I feel in some way less horrible than I would have thought this horrible place to be. Because it is this really bad place that kills a lot of people and has a lot of stigma around it. But everyone was there and hugging each other, and it was a very good community.” 

At the end of the trip, the students will go back to Albuquerque and work on making art inspired by their time in El Paso, turning their experiences into the next iteration of an ongoing project called “Puertas Fronterizas/Border Doors.”

Under the direction of Claudio Pérez, the teacher who organizes the trips, students are asked to paint colorful doors based on the stories of people they met and what they learned about the border. Examples of doors painted by previous student groups from 2019 through 2024 are on view at the Albuquerque Museum, in an exhibit that opened in October 2024 and runs through May of next year.