This was an eye opening book about Rathbone's experience at the Mexico-US border before the pandemic. These pages are full of sadness, frustration and despair, but also hope, love, and community. I don't think any of us have any understanding of what this process is like if we have never witnessed it and been a part of it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read this book.

Cristina Rathbone’s The Asylum Seekers is a harrowing and deeply human account of life at the US-Mexico border, where hope, resilience, and unimaginable hardship converge. Rathbone, an award-winning journalist and Episcopal priest, brings her unique background to Juarez, weaving intimate portraits of asylum seekers with reflections on faith and the resilience of the human spirit.

Rathbone, who has previously offered powerful insights into life in schools and prisons, turned to the cloth and now pastors unhoused families in the Northeast. Her dual perspective as a journalist and spiritual leader infuses the narrative with compassion and clarity. In The Asylum Seekers, she chronicles life in a makeshift tent camp at the foot of a bridge, where families fleeing trauma risk everything to seek asylum. Amid the chaos of families arriving, departing, and sometimes being forcibly returned, Rathbone captures both the despair and the beauty of a community determined to survive. She writes of grief-stricken parents, children playing in perilous conditions, and the haunting stories of those mourning unimaginable loss.

Yet, Rathbone also highlights the strength and ingenuity of the asylum seekers. Over time, a leadership team emerges, donations are distributed, and even classes for children begin. As an unofficial chaplain, Rathbone listens, supports, and learns what authentic faith looks like under these extreme conditions.

Drawing on her personal connection—her mother was a Cuban refugee—Rathbone weaves the intimate stories of asylum seekers with broader reflections on community, endurance, and the moral obligations we owe one another.

#broadleafbooks #theasylumseekers #cristinarathbone

An honest account of Mexican men, women, and children trying to gain asylum in the U.S. from a priest on the ground. She listens and tries to help doing whatever she can. Frustration with the
U. S. guards and soldiers and the corruption she sees within the system is shocking and inhumane.

Cristina Rathbone writes with compassion about the people trying to cross over into the U.S. Their stories about the violence they experienced are almost too much for her to bear. She relies on her faith and prayer to continue her work.

This is a memoir everyone should read to understand what happens at the U.S.-Mexico border fully.

It was surreal to be reading this book on January 20th.

People who are outraged about immigration and undocumented folks often say, “They should just come here legally.” I am not an immigration expert, but I do know some things! I know that it is very difficult to immigrate legally. We are one of the least generous countries when it comes to immigration, and while Congress could change that, they have refused to do so (yay xenophobia). At the same time, our country relies on the labor of undocumented people, some of whom were recruited here to work. We are exploiting people and then blaming them for our problems.

But like I said, I am not an immigration expert so one of the things I am working on in 2025 is learning more about immigration. I had the chance to read this book that is coming out in March, and I am so glad I did. In it, Cristina Rathbone, a priest, spent a year at our southern border with asylum seekers. If you saw the videos of people at the border weeping when their appointments were canceled, this is where she was. It is not illegal to seek asylum. It is clear in the book that we aren’t even following our own laws when it comes to asylum - those seeking asylum are constantly being told that America is full. And now, of course, it appears that asylum is ended. The stories that she hears and the strength and despair she bears witness to broke my heart open. Her work was so valuable and so draining, and she helps remind the reader of the ways that these numbers and groups of people are individuals with stories.

This is a wonderful book - she is an excellent writer and these are people and stories we should all care about. Her faith reflections are woven in skillfully and without being sentimental. Highly recommended.

I don’t think most people understand the immigration system. It is and always has been legal for immigrants to seek asylum in the US, but it has become more and more difficult for people to seek safety and that is a shame. This is a true account of what happens on the ground at the Mexico-US border, written by a priest who tried to aid those who were seeking asylum. It is a brutally honest account of the horrors and tragedies some of these people encountered.

Everyone should read this book. It is eye-opening, tragic and horrifying. It is written with an honesty rarely seen these days. Thank you, NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the eARC.

This book arrived at just the right time—and yet, also, a little too late. As I weigh whether to remain in the humanitarian space, it served as a reminder of the people and the work that first called me to this field. I love my work, and I love serving. But for much of the voting population in the United States, with its relentless ICE raids, the revival of Guantanamo Bay, and savage calls for deportation, it feels like the spiritual lens came a little bit too late. It feels like they are too are lost.

As the title suggests, The Asylum Seekers is about those seeking asylum in the United States. Through immersive, narrative-driven reporting, journalist and Episcopalian priest Cristina Rathbone documents the lives of Mexican asylum seekers in Juárez, living in tent camps along the Mexico-U.S. border in 2019-2020. She spent much of her time walking families to the border, hoping her clerical position might lend some weight to their request to enter the United States. She also spent a lot of time with the children, organizing daily English lessons and chances for their innocence to come back to the front. The time with the children were spent drawing and singing so that they could for however briefly forget both what had happened and what was coming.

Rathbone is not perfect. She is emotional, angry, confused, guilty, and, at times, she feels useless, burnt out, and lost. She serves as a listener and the stories recounted to her and the scars shown to her weigh heavily. Sometimes, the weight of it all builds inside her, and she has to go home to decompress. I loved this. Too often, journalistic accounts are cold, dry, and so data-driven that the humanity is lost. For those of us who work in this space, we know that it is emotionally heavy work. We are not perfect and it was so refreshing to read about someone who doesn’t hide it but embraces it and just tries to do her very best in this “small task.”

A major, major thank you to net galley and Broadleaf books for this ARC :) a necessary read

I wish there was a way to require all members of Congress (and the president) to read this book describing an artificial 'community' of Mexican asylum seekers at the Juarez/El Paso borderof Mexico and the United States. These are real people and families, strangers to each other, who have formed a temporary community while trying to save their lives by fleeing into the United States from unimaginable violence at home. It is written by a priest who lived with these refugees and saw the unbelievable hardships created by unfeeling beaurocratic laws in the United States. It should be read by everyone who claims to be a person of morals---Christian, Jewish, Muslem, Buddhist, non-believer.This is not the America I want to live in.

This is an intimate, heartbreaking book about the struggles of Mexican women, children and men seeking asylum in the U.S. It is told to the reader through the eyes of Cristina Rathbone, and award winning journalist and a priest. Her mother was a Cuban refugee, so she has a unique perspective. This is not just a factual book, but a book based on the authors passion and conviction that she is here to help these people. There is a lot of leaning on her faith- which did not bother me- but I know some reviewers did not like this aspect. However, it is this faith and personal connection that allow her to truly humanize this story. These are real people, looking to follow the laws of entry to the US. Through the narrative, we are able to see the sometimes, inhumane way the asylum seekers are treated, and that we are not following the law as it is written concerning immigration.

My goal this year is to read more non-fiction and learn about social issues in a deeper manner. The compassion with which Ms. Rathbone writes about these people is genuine. There are many stories where we do not know the ending- what happened to the family, children- yet this is true to the narrative. Many of these people were denied, or their simply not gotten back to.

This is an intimate story that is often heartbreaking. However, through her faith and commitment to those she is trying to help, we see that although their is a lot of sadness, there is also hope. This is a must read for anyone who would like a deeper look into immigration- not just the policies- but also of the lives of people seeking asylum legally and the effect our ever-changing policies have on them.

Thank you to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Melding horror and hope, "The Asylum Seekers" joins the pantheon of other heartrending works of narrative nonfiction, including "The Line Becomes a River" by Francisco Cantú, "The Beast" by Óscar Martínez, "The Devil's Highway" by Luis Alberto Urrea, and "Separated: Inside An American Tragedy" by Jacob Soboroff. Highly recommended for aficionados of Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. If only we lived in a world where Cristina Rathbone was given half the attention that Jeanine Cummins received when her self-righteous gringa book club novel pubbed a few years ago.

Have you ever considered how life in the borders is?

The author, both a journalist and a priest, knows firsthand. She documented her experience in the US-Mexico border, where individuals and families came in search of a better life, asking for asylum and entry to the US. Whether it was to find better opportunities for work or healthcare, or because of a tangible fear for their lives, Rathbone saw them all during the time she spent there, assisting those that waited for their asylum hearing. She also documented the feelings: the fear, the solidarity –so rare in times of peace, but here so abundant–, the hope and the despair. She helped with entertaining and teaching the little kids waiting, she accompanied families up to the US officials, she carried essentials to the people living temporarily on the sidewalk as they waited for their fates to be decided.

And she also had a lot to say about the policies that decide on the fate of humans, and how those shifted and became even harder. This book, bound to be published on March 18th, was a revelation. It is about a place that is very far from us, but then again, we saw that kind of despair in our little corner of the world as well. And I cannot say I’m a deeply religious person, but the author is the kind of person that gives me any hope that god exists.

My thanks to Netgalley and Broadleaf Books, for providing me with an ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.