MATAMOROS, MEXICO CITY – A yellow sun of butter rose over a crowded tent camp across the river from Texas and scorched the rotting debris under the ga and heat, a mixture of broken toys, human waste and food stuffed with flying fish.
Clothes and sheets were hung from the trees and soaked in the hurricane a week ago and dried hard after mud.
In Residents Gust that morning residents came out of the zipper-holes of their canvas houses, some going from buckets in hand to baths and water tanks to wash dishes. Other children gathered in front of the wash basin with arms full of underwear and pajamas. He waited for the first hot meal of the day, though he often remained ill.
Members of this displaced community requested asylum in the United States but were sent back to Mexico, and told to wait. They came there after unparalleled tragedies: violent attacks, oppressive extortions, the killing of loved ones. They are connected to one thing that they usually share – the rest is nowhere to be found.
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t catch up anymore,” said Jacqueline Salgado, who fled the camp from Sardin Mexico, sitting on her dugout in her cabin while her children played in the dirt. “But when I remember everything I went through, and how bad it was, I come back to the conclusion that I have to wait.”
Ms. Salgado is one of about 600 people trapped in a place many Americans would have thought would never have been. It is effectively a refugee camp at the gates of the United States, one of the first to emerge on the border in the history of the country.
After the first harvest in 2018, the border camp from Brownville, Texas, spread to nearly 1,000,000 people the following year, with at least 60,000 asylum seekers under the policy having to wait for the completion of their legal cases, which they can. Takes years.
Those who did not give up and did not return home or who had the means to go to shelters or ments apartments have been stuck outside in this camp ever since, or like others who are now wrapped up on the south-west border.
Many have been pitching tents for more than a year.
The Trump administration says a “stay in Mexico” policy is needed to end the exploitation of American immigration law and reduce congestion at border patrol facilities, with nearly 20 million immigrants to the United States between 2017 and 2019.
Mexican authorities have blamed the American government for the situation. But they also refused to designate outlying areas as official refugee camps in collaboration with the United Nations, which could then provide infrastructure for housing and sanitation.
“This is the first time we’ve been in this situation,” said Shant Dermagardechian, director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Monterey, Mexico. “And we certainly don’t support that.”
U.S. The Supreme Court this week successfully challenged the Federal Court App F Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for a policy review. The case is not resolved after the election, so those living in the camp will have to wait months, if not longer.
The camp drew attention during a presidential debate on Thursday night, when former Vice President Joseph R. “This is the first president in the history of the United States of America that anyone seeking asylum has to do in another country,” Biden Jr. noted. “They are sitting proudly on the other side of the river.”
Things have gotten worse with the advent of coronavirus. Although there were only a handful of cases at the camp, most of the American support personnel who regularly arrived to deliver supplies stopped coming in in the hope of avoiding the spread of the virus.
The Gulf cartel, which smuggles drugs across the border and is as powerful as local law enforcement, went ahead to fill the void.
The gang collects tolls from camp residents who decide to swim across the river on their own and are sometimes kidnapped for ransom. Beatings and disappearances have also become commonplace – sometimes for the safety of abused women or children, but at other times camp residents have violated gang rules regarding when and where they are allowed to move out of their tents.
In the last two months, nine bodies have been washed ashore on the banks of the Rio Grande near the camp; Mexican authorities said most of the deaths were due to an increase in gang activities during the epidemic.
“I did nothing, I did not steal anything, and yet I have to escape. Why Ms. Salgado said in the August Gust that day.
She said she and her children ran away from her abusive husband, who drank too much and beat her when she was upset, and because her brother was kidnapped and killed. Only then, his 11-year-old son, Alexander, who just seemed to pay attention vaguely, put down his toy and began to make it heavier.
“He’s constantly nervous,” his mother said. “Whenever we fight, his anxiety will make him sick and he will have to fight.”
Most of the children in the camp have not attended formal school since leaving home. Parents worry about whether they will be able to make up for lost time. Some are worried enough for their children to cross the river on the backs of smugglers, sending them to the United States on the last step of their perilous journey.
People who cannot afford to make such decisions are often persecuted by second-guessing.
“I was afraid I would never see him again because I have him,” said Carmen Vargas. Is. . “But my son needs to go to school. He is only 13 years old and has practically lost two years already. ”
Christopher gets bored listening to his mother and describes the life they left behind. He released an identity card showing he was a municipal police officer in Honduras, but said his success became a responsibility when he jailed a member of the drug cartel in 2018. Within hours, the cartel announced a hit on Ms. Vargas. She and Christopher fled, leaving behind decorative wooden furniture and a refrigerator full of food made to save the purchase.
With a couped palm, Ms. Vargas grabbed the garland of sweat that dripped down her forehead as she spoke. He apologized for the stench; Just outside his tent, insects crawled around the throat of a washed-out stool during the flooding of the rivers. “You have to survive everything here: the sun, the water, the cold, the heat, we have it all.”
Residents of the camp are incredibly sick with the flu virus and stomach upsets that are endlessly wrapped up in tents and have respiratory problems growing from the dusty air. Their skin is pokemarked by mosquito droppings that flood the camp after rain.
Most people accept that life on the other side of the border will hardly be fun – especially if they lost their shelter case and had to live in the shadows.
“Is it better to live in America than here without papers? Yes, that’s a thousand times better, “said Lucia Gomez of Guerrero, Mexico, as she picked up clothes and toys scattered outside her tent by the hurricane. “They can find you, detain you and deport you,” he said. “But if you manage to avoid them, you’ll be able to put food on the table.”
In her arms, she held the youngest child, a month-old boy named Yahir, whose back was covered in scorching heat. His son William, 16, was growing cherries in his mouth from a plate that was in the flies.
Ms. Gomez said her family had attended the camp from southern Mexico after her home was vandalized and her husband and father-in-law were shot dead. “A guy came in and shouted, ‘Put your hands up!'” Her 8-year-old son, John, yelled, holding his hand as if he were holding an imaginary gun.
“That’s why we wait,” she said. “It simply came to our notice then. And we try to resist for the sake of our children. ”
Volunteer groups purchased a laundry basin and water tank, as well as a row of hand washing stations and concrete showers, which, after months of dry laying in the center of the camp, have recently been connected to a water source.
But their efforts have often seemed futile. Ever since the camp appeared, an invisible wall of policies has been preventing its inhabitants from entering the United States, it has only become more lengthened and stronger.
Some have found a way to improve their comfort. Antonia Maldonado, a 1-year-old onia from Honduras, also stood in a kitchen, confessing together under a blue fence suspended from a tree. He placed the raw chicken on an open flame on a chisel, using a haphazard piece of wood on two ac necks of the upside down bucket as a countertop.
He said he was looking at the election in the hope that the new administration would ease some of the sanctions imposed by President Trump.
Mrs. Maldonado added, “Not a single leaf goes to that country without his permission,” I just want to live with pride. I don’t want money. ”
Some parents pinch pesos to buy decorations and food items from the supersorket and refuse cans for their children’s birthdays. But many walk around the camp with bloody physical eyes, constantly on the verge of tears or in a zombie state as if they are emotionally closed.
When Rodrigo Castro arrives at Mataras de la Para, he switches between emotional extremes. Over the course of a year, he became a shy high school student who liked to stay up late and draw flowers in his notebook to the head of his entire family. It was Guatemala’s most brutal and powerful gang after Barrio 18, he killed his mother and sister – an evil meaning he and the rest of his relatives could be at the top of his murder list.
“I can’t sleep,” he said one afternoon as he sat outside the tent where he lived with his wife, daughter, grandmother, orphaned niece and his 16-year-old sister, who gave birth after arriving at the camp. “Sometimes I feel crazy.” He said he was concerned that someone else in his family might be killed.
But just two weeks later, it was the body of Mr. Castro de la Mercury that was washed out of the river on one side of the camp. His death was a mystery. Police investigated him as a possible homicide but eventually determined he had drowned.
His wife, Cynthia, was still in shock when the Guatemala City bus returned to retrieve her husband’s body. She also hoped to change her travel documents that were soaked in her pants when she died.
She will need them when she goes back with a 2 year old to try again.
