Photo illustration by Max Herman/Borderless Magazine. Photos courtesy of Ruby Montana. Map of Ciudad Juarez-El Paso border from OpenStreetMaps El Paso-based Bridge Pups Rescue volunteers, led by Ruby Montana, have been reuniting immigrants with their pets after crossing the US-Mexico border.
Keyla Gutierrez reached the El Paso border on a chilly morning in late March. After crossing nine countries, she finally reached U.S. soil at 5 a.m. She was exhausted but immediately felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
Gutierrez and her family had spent five months traveling from Ecuador to seek asylum in America. Their dogs, Tobby and Luna, had made the treacherous journey with them, and now they would all be safe.
But Gutierrez’ sense of relief was extinguished when a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent told her she would have to leave her dogs in the desert if they wanted to remain in the U.S.
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“The dogs had been with us for so long, they were like children to me,” Gutierrez said. “There was no way I could abandon them. They were literally my entire home — the kids and the dogs.”
After some back-and-forth, the CBP agent said they would contact a caretaker for the dog.
Still unsure where the dogs would go, Gutierrez and her children waited for six hours until a man came and took her dogs to a shelter to wait while border agents processed her family.
The family was released the next day following their asylum screening and taken to the shelter to pick up their dogs. Still, without a place to go, she asked the animal shelter to help with her beloved pets. That’s when Gutierrez met Ruby Montana, the owner of Bridge Pups Rescue.
Montana and the Bridge Pups Rescue volunteers have spent the last two years reuniting immigrants with their pets who are unable to remain with them while in CBP holding.
Montana started the animal rescue in 2012 after her brother, a border patrol agent, told her how many stray animals he saw along the border. Since then, border agents have called Montana to let her know when they find a stray dog, and she has worked with volunteers to foster and find homes for the pets.
Montana’s work has evolved over the last decade. In the summer of 2022, a border patrol agent contacted Montana about an immigrant family who had crossed the border with their dog named Simba. She agreed to help immediately, and since then, she’s been helping to temporarily home and reunite pets with new arrivals crossing the U.S. and Mexico border.
Montana, a professor of Humanities and Chicano Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, comes from an immigrant family herself. Her grandparents moved from Chihuahua to El Paso in the ‘50s for a better life for her parents and grandchildren.
“I’m very much appreciative of what they did and all the struggles that they went through for us,” said Montana. “And I think that’s the human part, right? We just all want what’s best for our families and ourselves and our pets.”
Humanizing the immigrant experience — especially to people who otherwise lack compassion for an immigrant’s plight — is a large part of Bridge Pups Rescue’s mission.
“They see their own love for their pets reflected in how much these immigrants love their pets, too, and I think that’s something that can really unite a lot of people.”
Since 2022, Montana has worked with just over 20 foster homes to reunite nearly 40 pets with their families nationwide. Bridge Pups volunteers care for the dogs while they are separated from their owners by getting them vet care, required vaccinations and food. It can often take several months before they are reunited with their owners. Volunteers also transport the dogs to their new homes once their owners are settled down. Sometimes these new homes are hundreds of miles away or down the street.
Montana has recently certified Bridge Pups Rescue as a nonprofit and is working with a local congresswoman and the Texas Civil Rights Project to establish a federal policy allowing immigrants to come into the country with their pets. Currently, agents from Border Patrol and the Texas National Guard have discretion on whether a dog is allowed to cross with a family, which has resulted in dogs being lost and even stolen, Montana said.
“There have been several dogs that have just completely disappeared, and I feel absolutely helpless, especially knowing how much these people sacrificed to get here,” Montana said.
“I don’t check a dog’s nationality before I extend compassion to one, and the same goes for humans,” she said.
Bridge Pups Rescue’s mission has been a blessing for immigrant families hoping to start a new life in the United States.
As Gutierrez and her three children made the journey through shelters to their permanent home in Wisconsin, they took solace in knowing that their dogs were being looked after by the kind people at Bridge Pups.
The state required that Tobby get neutered, so a volunteer facilitated the surgery and obtained the proper legal documentation necessary to keep the dogs in the U.S. When Gutierrez finally settled after five months, one of the volunteers drove nearly 1,500 miles to reunite the dogs with their family.
“We kept thinking about what was going to happen, imagining that we weren’t going to see them again,” Gutierrez said. “So it was a blessing; I can’t even explain how I felt in that moment.”
After months apart, Gutierrez and her children were brought to tears when they were able to hug their dogs again. “It was like having found our lost friend,” Gutierrez said. “The kids used to ask if I thought the dogs forgot about us, but now it’s like the months didn’t happen.”
To support Bridge Pups Rescue, you can donate here.
Chelsea Verstegen is a contributing writer and reporter with Borderless Magazine.
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