MATAMOROS, Mexico (Border Report) — Trekking through thick mud and puddles left after recent rains, Jill Biden, wife of former vice president Joe Biden, joined a group of religious and local leaders on Sunday to pass out tamales and Christmas gifts to children as she toured a refugee camp across the border from Brownsville, Texas, where thousands of asylum-seekers live.

Wearing thick black boots, Biden spent almost two hours in the camp, led by Brownsville Catholic Bishop Daniel Flores, U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, and well-known local Catholic nun Sister Norma Pimentel, who oversees volunteer efforts here for several nonprofit groups that help the migrants each day.

At noon the bishop led a prayer for the families who lined up for a Christmas meal plate of tamales, rice and beans. Flores asked God “to watch over these families during these difficult times.”

Over 2,000 migrants live in the camp — most of which are called MPPs, because they are forced to remain in Mexico as part of the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols program — as they await their U.S. immigration hearings. This past year over 60,000 MPPs from California to Texas have been sent to wait in Mexico, Trump administration officials said recently.

Some of the families have been living in tents in this filthy and smelly encampment — at the base of the Gateway International Bridge — since mid-July when MPP was first implemented in South Texas.

“It’s heartbreaking. It’s really heartbreaking,” Biden said as she stood on the banks of the Rio Grande where clothes hung from trees, children played in mud pits and migrants peeked out of their tents to get a glimpse of her. “Across the river is the flag of the United States. The flag of the United States offers people hope. They’re bringing their families and their loved ones here for hope of a better future and a better life for themselves.”

“We are all immigrants and our nation was built on immigration and immigrants and we are welcoming nation, but that’s not the message we are sending here at the border. We’re saying ‘Stop, don’t come in!’ And that’s not who we are,” said Biden, whose husband is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

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Helen Perry, a nurse practitioner, who runs Global Response Management, a nonprofit that has set up free medical services at the camp, said she saw a few children with hypothermia earlier this week when temperatures dipped into the 30s. She said there also is lice, chickenpox and several cases of influenza in the camp.

Biden asked Perry about giving out vaccinations, but Perry said the flu vaccinations are very costly and there aren’t enough to go around.

Biden became only the second person affiliated with a Democratic presidential campaign to so far visit this refugee camp. In October, Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, also visited this Matamoros camp.

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