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Mexico Stops Migrants (Part 2)
Apparently, the only folks left in Mexico are those who wanted to stay. "We just feel safer," said Garcia, who owns a window-tinting shop in Juárez, yards from the Rio Grande. "Not so much from the migrants, but from the coyotes. They're bad people." Juárez and other Mexican border cities such as Reynosa across from McAllen are already wracked by gang violence and high murder rates. Now the drug lords and coyotes, human smugglers, have more targets: migrants who are being forced to wait in Mexico before being summoned to the U.S. to legally seek asylum under the Remain in Mexico program both governments have embraced. Ahhh, back to the tissues. If we'd let them in, and provide Holiday Inn rooms for all of them, we'd thwart the bad guys. In southern states, migrants are returning to traditional methods to get north, no longer traveling in caravans. So national guardsmen are targeting The Beast, the train that many migrants take north. Many fall off of the trains and die or lose limbs. We could put them on airlines in their home countries and fly them to San Francisco. It'd be safer, and they'd feel right at home.  But guardsmen are also raiding airports, bus stations, even hotels and motels. In Juárez, they're questioning hotel guests about whether they're traveling north and asking to see their documents, according to several Central American and Cuban travelers."We should be ashamed of ourselves," added Calvillo, who's also heard similar stories of authoritarian behavior. "I'm sure human rights are being violated. The consequences are felt right here on the border. This is where fates are being decided." Fates should never be decided in a foreign country. The idea of being deported back to Honduras, empty-handed, scares them. "It's not easy. We have a huge debt to pay," including to smugglers, said Medina. He's now pondering whether he should send his wife and son back to Honduras and head north on his own, slipping into the U.S. and sidestepping the possibility of seeking asylum. He would head deep into the shadows, become an "illegal, without documents, to get that job and start all over again." Oh, the irony! It just burns! Back on the ground in the so-called Red Zone between El Paso and Juárez, where immigrants were turning themselves in by the hundreds to U.S. authorities only weeks ago, the Mexican guardsmen and other state and federal law enforcement say it's too early to declare victory. Smugglers, they say, are scheming to come up with new strategies to move migrants north. Smuggling has been part of a profitable life along the border since the lines were drawn. And the border is 2,000 miles long. And a lot of it is unfenced. Some of the guardsmen say their training was hasty and limited. Many were soldiers already working in the area to curb drug violence when the government ordered them to slap on national guard arm bands and go to work on the border. Is it not a valid job for the military to secure the national borders? Some Mexicans see as them doing the dirty work for Trump and the U.S. Border Patrol. When asked about that, Aparicio quickly responded: "I'm just doing the job I've been asked to do. All we're asking is that people come in legally into our territory." What a novel concept. He confessed to being conflicted about his new job at a time when drug violence in Juárez is spiking. Fighting it is the job he was hired to do. He also has relatives who live illegally in the U.S. "I think just about every Mexican has a relative living in the United States without documents," he said. "They're not criminals. They're good, hardworking people." Who just happened to come into the U.S. illegally. Ask Beto what that makes them. He looked into the eyes of the reporter who had run across the river berm to record the scene. "If you hadn't been here I probably would have let them go into the hands of the migra," said Uribe, using slang for the U.S. Border Patrol. He added that they "would have turned them away, anyways. But at least they would have felt they achieved their dream of crossing into the United States." "But had I done that you might have said I had taken a bribe," Uribe said. "I'm aware this is just part of a game to fulfill the whims of others. We're pawns in the game." Tragic. Maybe Hollywood could make a movie out of this. If only they had a previous version to remake. Posted by: Bobby 2019-07-01 |
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