Santa Fe woman creates pillowcases for children seeking asylum at border

They are strangers from a world away: children and their families fleeing totalitarian governments and unspeakable poverty. Some arrive on American soil with blistered feet and thirsty mouths.

Julie Hliboki welcomes them with pillowcases, soft fabrics on which they can lay their heads. She sews each one in her Santa Fe home with the hope of easing a child’s suffering.

For eight months, Hliboki has sewn dozens of colorful pillowcases, printed with giraffes and singing daisies and embedded with tags that read “you are loved.” They are distributed to children seeking asylum through New Mexico’s border towns.

“I wanted to contribute in some way to what was happening on the border,” she said, standing next to a table laden with fabrics and another supporting a sewing machine. “I thought, ‘What if each child was able to get something for themselves?’ So I made half a dozen pillowcases, and when they got back from delivering them, I had an order for 50 more.”

So, she went to work creating more pillowcases, simple fabric-and-thread creations in cheerful prints, each a gift for a child who walked to freedom through possibly hundreds of miles in uncertain terrain and sometimes hostile territories.

“From a child’s standpoint, just imagine what it’s like to take this arduous journey with your family, not really knowing what’s going on, landing in a place that feels like it doesn’t want you, a place that’s hostile, and you’re suffering from medical issues, from hunger, from thirst, and from sunburn,” Hliboki said.

Julie Hliboki’s sewing partner, Mathew Schneider of Santa Fe, works about 12 hours per week sewing pillowcases for children seeking asylum in the United States.

The pillowcases join dozens of homemade first-aid kits created by Hliboki’s congregation, the Quaker religious society Santa Fe Monthly Meeting. The kits contain medical items specific to treating swollen and blistered feet. They are delivered to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Silver City, where they are distributed to shelters in Deming and El Paso, Hliboki said.

Ariana Saludares, executive director of the organization that operates Mariposa Ranch, an immigrant shelter project in Deming that receives about 200 people per week, said some of the children have never seen a pillow, let alone a pillowcase.

“So these pillowcases become safe places to put things. They are soft, and they smell good, and they’re fun to look at,” Saludares said. “It’s the first thing they receive when they get to America, so it’s now a blanket, a hiding place. It’s everything it needs to be for a child.”

Barbara Gabioud, who coordinates incoming and outgoing supplies for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Silver City, said her mission receives an outpouring of handmade goods like Hliboki’s. They are labors of love that make a difference in the lives of immigrants who are often dropped off in random places and left to fend for themselves.

“We have a woman in Silver who’s made 1,200 backpacks, a woman in Deming who crochets toys for kids, a woman in Silver who hand-makes magical-looking dolls, people who hand-make carrying sacks,” Gabioud said. “It’s people’s way of caring and showing that we’re not all government.”

In her sewing studio behind her house, Hliboki and her sewing partner and friend, Mathew Schneider, rifle through fabrics. They met at a garden party this summer, and Hliboki told him of her effort.

“I jumped all over it. I thought it was the coolest thing,” said Schneider, who joined the project soon after their meeting and sews pillowcases in his own sewing room. “I loved the idea of a kid at the end of the road saying, ‘This is for me. Someone wants me here.’ ”

Hliboki isn’t new to sewing, to volunteer work or to children, she said. She moved to Santa Fe in 2020 from Georgia, where she served as a health care chaplain at Children’s Hospital of Atlanta, a Level 1 trauma center.

“I spent a lot of time with children when I was there, and I made quilts in honor of the children who most affected me,” she said.

In the seams of those quilts, she tenderly sewed the same “you are loved” tags.

“It was a way to sort of process all I was witnessing there,” she said.

When she accepted a job as a hospice chaplain at Presbyterian Medical Center Santa Fe, a position she left a year ago, she felt the need to continue her volunteer work. It’s an effort that brings a state of mindful meditation to her life, she said.

She joined the local Quaker society and the meditation center, Mountain Cloud Zen Center. “I wanted to create something I could do in quantity. I knew I couldn’t make quilts, because it would be time and resource prohibitive,” she said.

She spends about four hours a day in her shop, sewing fabrics together, and she’s begun a GoFundMe page with a $3,500 goal to help raise money to buy more fabrics and thread. As of earlier this week, the fundraising initiative she named “Pillowcases 4 Love” sat at $2,490.

Schneider said despite being hindered by the loss of his left arm in an accident, he spends about 12 hours a week sewing the pillowcases. Their joint effort has yielded more than 200 pillowcases so far.

“Julie is pretty much dedicated full-time to contributing to the people of the world around her,” Schneider said. “I continue to be inspired by how she’s expanding this.

“I think of these children, and it breaks my heart to think that they’re risking so much to be here. There’s more than enough room in this country, more than enough resources. I don’t understand what we’re so worried about, and if some silly little pillowcase makes its way into the hands of just one child … ”

His words give way to tears, so Hliboki offers hers.

“These are people who are coming from war-torn countries, people who are oppressed, people who have risked their lives to cross the border, “ she said.

“They come with horrendous blisters on their feet from walking across the desert. They’re bringing their families with them at risk of their children not surviving the trip. These are people who are suffering incredibly, and this is one drop in the bucket of compassion.”

• Pillowcases 4 Love, a volunteer effort to create colorful pillowcases for children seeking asylum in New Mexico’s border towns, has nearly reached its GoFundMe goal.

• To contribute to Pillowcases 4 Love, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/pillowcases-4-love

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