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(CNN) - Máximo, an asylum seeker, fled his native Honduras with his son to find a new life in the United States.
But while he waits for his cases to be heard, he says they have practically become prisoners in a migrant shelter in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, where cartels take advantage of migrants who venture into the streets. He and his son were almost kidnapped, he says.
"We are alone and only the hand of God has kept us safe from the constant danger that boils in this country," he wrote in a letter. “We do not intend to cause any harm to the United States. We would simply like a safe place [to wait] for a response from the government. ”
Maximo is among the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who, according to the Trump administration's policy, must wait in Mexico for their immigration procedures in the United States.
He and almost two dozen other migrants at the border responded to a request by Denise LaRock, an American nun who advocates for immigrants, to write letters explaining their dangerous situation. LaRock told migrants that he would share the letters with journalists to call attention to the dangers they face.
Asylum seekers waiting in Nuevo Laredo wrote heartbreaking letters in which they talk about kidnapping and death. Envelopes are handmade.
CNN only uses the names of migrants due to security problems.
LaRock has been helping about 200 asylum seekers, mostly from Central America, who live in shelters provided by Lorenzo Ortiz, a pastor of a ministry called The Good Migrant Samaritan. Asylum seekers include a former police officer, a mechanical engineer, a mechanic and a university student.
The shelters, which include four churches and a house, are full and have little or no furniture. Migrants sleep in cots or on the ground. And the surrounding neighborhoods are so dangerous, they write, that walking outside the shelter could result in kidnapping or death.
“Kidnapping is the daily bread [here],” wrote Maria, another migrant.
"Mexico is the same or worse than Honduras," wrote a third, Elsa. "We are in prison here because of the danger, because the posters are in every corner."
Thousands of migrants wait in limbo
Approximately 60,000 migrants have been returned to Mexico since the beginning of the Trump administration's "Remain in Mexico" policy in the second quarter of the year, which requires asylum seekers to wait in that country for Let their cases be resolved. The Trump administration has said the program has helped reduce the number of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border and alleviate the current border crisis.
But Ortiz says that migrants at the border face new dangers. He claims that the posters cover bus stations and streets near the immigration office in search of Central Americans. Asylum seekers, he says, are easy targets because they are generally released by US authorities with shoes without laces and carrying a manila folder with documents and a plastic bag with their belongings.
A migrant, Tere, wrote that she and her 7-year-old son were kidnapped once they reached the U.S. border and were held for nine days without food. They were only released after their family paid a ransom, he wrote.
"I thank God for freeing me from that terrible experience," wrote Tere, who says his appointment at the asylum court in the United States is next February.
In their letters, many of the migrants thank Ortiz and God for their survival.
Ortiz told CNN that some migrants have been kidnapped more than once and that others have been sexually assaulted or have lost their fingers over the cartels. At least four families who were kidnapped have not returned, Ortiz said.
"The danger is real," he told CNN by phone.
A cartel assaulted one of its shelters at gunpoint about two months ago, he said. But he said the cartel didn't hurt anyone after they learned that the shelter was run by a pastor.
Fed and safe
LaRock is a U.S. citizen and says she has crossed the border from Laredo, Texas, in the Ortiz van every Wednesday for the past two months to take supplies to the shelters.
The women in the Ortiz shelter cook but do not make the purchase because they find it too dangerous to leave the building.
She fills the van with cooking oil, beans, diapers, blankets, clothes, puzzles and anything else that her Interfaith Welcome Coalition can gather to help address the basic needs of migrants.
He also started a GoFundMe page to help Ortiz pay rent, electricity, water and food for shelters.
LaRock says he hopes desperate letters from migrants will help other Americans understand how US policies expose asylum seekers to some of the same dangers they fled from their home countries.
"I hope people ... can have compassion," LaRock told CNN by phone.
Meanwhile, migrants in Nuevo Laredo expect their future to be somehow brighter.
"I regretted having left my country," Lilian, a Honduran who waited at a border shelter with her daughter, wrote in her letter. But poverty in Honduras was too severe and her daughter had no future there, she said.
"The goal of every mother is to look for something better for her children."