ROMA, Texas.– “They started yelling at us that we had to turn off the lights and shut up the children,” recalls Katia, a 24-year-old mother from Honduras.
They were told that the Mexican police had found the place and could discover that it was a safe house.
In that room alone there were about 150 migrants like her.
There were more in the kitchen, in another room, "everywhere."
Scared, her 6-year-old daughter grabbed her leg and her 1-year-old baby moved on her chest.
The mother hugged them tightly.
"Shut up, the police are there, don't make a fuss,"
their captors told them.
She was thinking of her husband, Xavier.
The coyotes guarding them had separated them by gender a few hours ago and he still hadn't made it to the safe house.
"They struck out four, five rafts."
They investigate if agents have authorization to sabotage the rafts of the coyotes
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It was the last effort of this Honduran family before trying to cross the border.
Behind the back, almost a month on the road and
about $ 11,000 spent on coyotes
.
They had just arrived in Ciudad Miguel Alemán, a border town in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
From there, the United States is only a few feet away, crossing by raft or swimming in the Rio Grande until reaching Roma, Texas.
"The boy told us
' if the police come in, I am one of you, I am an immigrant, I am not a manager,
" says Katia.
"And whispering, whispering, and already scared children, some asking for mommy and others saying 'mommy, hug me."
Suddenly a child started crying.
Katia's baby caught nervousness.
“He got scared and started crying too.
I tried to calm him down, but he could
n't
, he would
n't calm down and they yelled at me to shut him up, otherwise they would take him away
”.
Recalling it, hours after what happened, Katia still suffers, she stretches the sleeves of her sweater tightly and opens her eyes as if they were going to pop out.
The baby was not silent and the situation got complicated.
The coyote grabbed the mother's hand and forced her to hold her baby's mouth so that she wouldn't cry.
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“He started screaming more and more.
I was like ten minutes holding my son's mouth tight.
The child then began to choke and then I began to pat him on the back and he began to vomit and vomit, vomit ”.
There fear invaded this mother
.
“I suffered seeing him like this.
He felt that he was going to suffocate because there have already been cases of that happening.
Mothers have had to cover their children's mouths and end up suffocating them from doing that so much ”.
Full of vomit, the mother began to scream.
She asked for the door to be opened, she said she couldn't have her son like this.
"I didn't want my son to suffer anymore," he says.
They told her to be quiet, to be quiet, that they were going to listen to her.
The Honduran family of Katia, 24, her husband Xavier, 30, and their daughter, after crossing the US border near Roma, Texas on May 9, 2021. Damia Bonmatí
“When he was done vomiting, the boy fell to the ground and, to this day, I tell God that
I don't know if my boy fell asleep or passed out
.
I just picked him up and started to touch his vital signs. "
The boy breathed.
"I cried, I cried horrible, because my husband was not there too."
"All I wanted was to hug him and cry"
Men in uniforms entered the room.
The Honduran mother does not know which police force they were part of, only that they were Mexican and hooded.
They asked the migrants to stand to the sides of the room.
[The Border Patrol detains more than 180 immigrants hiding in three houses in Laredo, Texas]
But, after a while, they left: “The boy came in saying that everything had already happened, that they had arranged, that each one to their place because we had the floor to sleep on.
He only said that, which they have already arranged ”.
Noticias Telemundo tried to contact the authorities of Ciudad Miguel Alemán, but received no response.
That same night her husband, Xavier, finally arrived
.
“It was distressing.
When I saw him walk through that door, I didn't fit.
All I wanted was to hug him and cry, ”she says now.
The 30-year-old father and 24-year-old mother left Honduras almost a month ago.
They took advantage of the fact that the man had vacations to escape.
He was investigating homicides with the police, and the gangs stepped up their threats
.
"They even sent me photos of where my wife and children were," he says.
The roads near Roma, Texas, are littered with objects that migrants lost or dumped after crossing the river.Damiá Bonmatí
There they were: in a safe house, in a city in Tamaulipas, surrounded by dozens of migrants;
some slept lying on the floor, others sitting as they could.
The couple, who were trying to reach the United States for the first time, did not expect such conditions.
They had been told about "hotels, comfortable houses, with good mattresses" for the entire journey
.
Nothing to see.
After the incident, the fear of mothers and fathers with babies did not end.
“They began to scold us that everything happened because of us, because of the children.
For hours, everyone made an effort to keep the children quiet ”.
[Coyotes use Facebook to get people interested in crossing into the United States]
“How do they let us have cell phones, so
I
either
put pichingos (cartoons) on the child on YouTube
.
There I have his favorite pichingo and there I am calming him down.
The girl, well, is already grown up.
So to her I say: love, you can not make noise.
And she sits to the side ”.
“I am the pastor! I brought water, I brought Coca, here we wait for you, God bless you "
The following afternoon they were told that they were going to cross.
They carried very little with them: the most important documents and the diapers for the baby.
They walked for a long time until they reached the Mexican bank of the river.
Only some distant light was visible and only the sound of crickets was heard.
A girl with a toy while her mother awaits the arrival of the Border Patrol, in Roma, Texas, on May 9, 2021.Damiá Bonmatí
On the other side, in the United States, also in the dark, several members of the National Guard were waiting under a tent and some journalists awaiting the crossings.
Suddenly, after hours under the starry sky, the American side began to hear a rumor: children's voices and baby cries.
A Texan guard focused a high-range flashlight on the Mexican side
, but saw only dark trees and the river almost motionless.
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Attentive to children's voices on the Mexican side, Juan Antonio Peña, a volunteer from a church in Roma, Texas, approached the rocks closest to the river.
“I am the pastor!
Here I wait for you!
I brought water, I brought Coca, here we are waiting for you, God bless you ”, he shouted at them.
Minutes later the first raft appeared.
With doubts, the families jumped to the rocks and, with the water up to the waist
, the coyote returned to Mexico.
He said he had more migrants waiting.
Katia and Xavier, who preferred not to use their real names for fear of reprisals in their country, followed the instructions of the guards.
They still had to walk a mile uphill until they reached a paved road to wait for the Border Patrol.
The father was carrying the youngest on his shoulders and he was gasping for air when he spoke, because of the physical effort and the nerves.
Migrants line up in Romas, Texas, around 2:00 am on May 9.
The Border Patrol divides them into three groups: single minors, families with children under 7 years of age, and the rest of families. Damiá Bonmatí
"
We don't know what could happen,"
said the 30-year-old father, aware that they could be immediately expelled by the Biden government or that they could lose their asylum cases before an immigration judge.
In the group, walking with them,
Paola Torres says that she is crossing with her 5-year-old son for the second time
, after being quickly expelled by the Government under title 42. Maritxa Mendoza arrived with her 4-year-old son because he stayed homeless and jobless due to the recent hurricanes in Honduras.
They also know how difficult it is to travel with children and ask for silence on the way.
[Biden faces the challenge of stopping the caravans of migrants from Central America]
Upon arriving at the place where they are processed, a mother gives her daughter a colorful toy to play with; is your favorite. A dad gives a Barbie doll to his little girl to wait. A child tells us that we are in Honduras. And another begins to dig into the ground with a stick that he rescues on the way. He laughs, he speaks, “look more”, and all of him is stained with dirt. As children do.
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