After seven years of hauling donations, serving meal lines and making run after run across the bank to Matamoros, the volunteer group Team Brownsville has shut down. Some former members say they will keep the work alive under a newly formed nonprofit, Madrinas de Justicia. The founders say the shift gives them an out-of-state legal umbrella and added protection so volunteers can continue supporting migrants stuck at the border. The reorganization ends Team Brownsville’s day-to-day operations but not, organizers insist, the aid network they built.
Volunteers say the work will carry on
Andrea Rudnik, one of Team Brownsville’s founding members, told reporters the group needed “support and protection so they could continue helping migrants,” and that volunteers were forming Madrinas de Justicia to keep distributions of hygiene items, clothing and meals going. Retirees Gerry Page and Kathy Harrington, both named as members of the new group, say they plan to keep handing out basic supplies and companionship to people in shelters and encampments. These details were reported by KXAN.
What Team Brownsville did
For seven years, Team Brownsville volunteers ran donation drives, packed meals and helped operate a welcome center owned by the City of Brownsville that served migrants released from Customs and Border Protection custody. The group says it assisted thousands of people in South Texas and across the border in Matamoros, providing goods, meals and referrals to shelters and encampments, as reported by The Texas Tribune.
Legal pressure and court fights
The decision to shift operations follows repeated scrutiny from the state. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office had sought to question Team Brownsville as part of a broader probe of charities that aid migrants, and judges have pushed back on those efforts. A state judge denied a petition that would have allowed the attorney general to depose the group’s leaders, according to coverage by the Rio Grande Guardian, a legal setback for Paxton’s campaign targeting border nonprofits.
New nonprofit and how to help
Members say Madrinas de Justicia will operate under the umbrella of New York-based Grannies Respond and will accept donations for migrants, with organizers pointing people to Team Brownsville’s Facebook page for donation information, according to reporting by KXAN. Grannies Respond maintains a national volunteer network and has posted related coverage of grassroots aid efforts on its site, according to Grannies Respond.
Volunteers stress that closing Team Brownsville’s formal operations does not mean the relief work stops. Instead, they say, the new structure is meant to shield volunteers while keeping supplies and legal referrals moving to migrants with pending asylum claims. Organizers and local advocates say the region’s informal support network has already adapted many times in recent years, and for now those relationships are what community members say will matter most to people still waiting for their next steps at the border.
