A family from Hannah Holler’s church fled cartel violence in Tijuana after pastoring a local church and opening a women’s home that rescued women from prostitution and addiction. Their ministry put them in danger, prompting them to seek safety in the United States.

Once here, they became deeply involved in serving their new community — leading a Spanish‑speaking Bible group and running a homeless outreach ministry. Their story reflects their steadfast, mission‑minded hearts. Amid fear, hardship and even family separation through deportation, they have continued to pastor, serve and share the hope of Christ with those around them.

As Hannah shares, they came here for help — and as Christians, we are the ones called to help.

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This video is part of the “This Is My Immigrant Neighbor” series, which invites us to see immigration not as an issue, but as a human story.

Video Transcript:

My name is Hannah Holler. I’m on staff at a church plant, and I work a lot with the youth, but also a lot of the outreach ministry. We are in a neighborhood that is very ethnic. A family from our church is from Tijuana, and they had moved here in 2012, but prior to that, they had started pastoring at a church. They opened a women’s home and would actually go to really rough parts of Tijuana and help women that were trapped in prostitution and addictions, helping them get back on their feet. Since prostitution and drug addiction is a big profit for a lot of people, the cartel also kind of put a target on their family’s back, broke into the home, robbed it, and left them in a really dangerous situation.

In 2012, they decided to get a tourist visa. They came to the United States, and then they just decided to stay here because it was much safer. For the sake of their family, they knew that was the best thing to do. When they got here, they didn’t know anything about what asylum was and didn’t apply for that initially. In coming, there was a lot of fear because there was always the threat of being sent back home. They faced a lot of fear of if they got caught, they didn’t have a chance.

Their family was running a storefront that was selling pizzas and other foods, and we started building a relationship with them through that. They would make a lot of pizzas for our churches for meetings, and eventually they got really invested in the church. The dad is now pastoring our Spanish community group that we have every Friday. Their family has done really amazing things for our community. They run a homeless ministry where they go on the streets and pass out food and water and other supplies that they need. The mom has always been quick to make food for community groups, for any events that we have going on in the church, do projects around the church, and they’ve just been the biggest blessing.

It has been a really rough few months for their family. The mom was caught with some traffic issues and was detained by ICE and was in custody for several months. One of the cool things is she led something like 11 people to Jesus while she was there. In that time, she had several hearings where they tried to gain asylum, but it didn’t help, and she ended up being deported recently back to Mexico. It left the family here without her. The rest of the family fortunately was able to stay, but it is really hard to watch their family be split apart.

I think it has affected how churches talk about immigration, because a lot of people have known this family, even from other churches. This is a family that very much loves Jesus, that very much wants to see people know Christ and be supported and cared for. Even when I was in Ecuador a few years ago, I met a lot of Venezuelan refugees that have a lot of issues with their government and with the cartel there, and they’re fleeing not even to the United States, but to a lot of other countries. I met a man whose family had been killed by people, and I think that really opened my eyes to people. People are not trying to come here to just sell drugs. People are not trying to come here to just traffic other people. People are not coming here to murder and kill and destroy. They’re coming here because they want help. And I think as Christians, we’re the ones that are called to help.