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Alexander Lundi's impossible road to the United States

2021-09-27T21:31:12.291Z


They traveled thousands of kilometers. They went through jungles and deserts; they suffered the mafias. But very few made it. EL PAÍS collects the stories of four Haitian migrants who were trapped at the border on their way to the American dream


The journey is impossible.

The thousands of kilometers from South America.

The jungle taken over by criminals.

Give birth on the way and sleep in the open.

The insects, the animals, the dirt, the deaths.

The police extorting money.

The current of the river up to the neck, the lifeline cut off.

On the other side, a line of patrols that blinds.

There are people who cross it: almost 15,000 migrants arrived ten days ago in Ciudad Acuña, in Coahuila (Mexico).

After crossing almost an entire continent, they crossed illegally into the United States.

The migrants were mostly Haitians who escaped political and economic instability in their country years ago.

They all ask themselves a question that they think is obvious: "If my country was fine, why am I going to come here?"

More information

  • Biden takes responsibility for what happened at the border and admits that "it was outrageous"

  • Mexico near the camp where hundreds of Haitian migrants gather at the border

The Joe Biden Administration contained them and began the diplomatic fight with the Mexican Government for the control of arrivals from the south, which this year were record.

On one side of the border they threatened to deport them and on the other they would take them to Tapachula, a retaining wall they crossed when they entered Mexico through Guatemala.

They endured confused and exhausted.

The children - there were hundreds - coughed and their chests vibrated like a drum.

They hung themselves from the games where wet clothes also hung.

The adults packed everything in bags in case they had to run.

These are some of the faces of the latest emergency on the border.

The letters of Alexander Lundi

Alexander Lundi plays football in a field a few meters from the cardboard on which he has been sleeping these last days.

There are 16 inside the soccer field, and next to it there is an equally full field.

It will be that so many need to be distracted.

Not thinking about how to get to the other side, or what if they try, or what if they wait a few more days.

Alexander left Haiti at the age of seven and lived in Chile until two months ago without a permanent residence card.

He sold the car, quit his job at the fire station and crossed the continent through 11 countries, by bus or on foot.

A group of Haitian migrants play soccer in the Ciudad Acuña camp.Teresa de Miguel

His mother raised Alexander and his four siblings alone. He supported him to start the journey - because he supports him in everything - and there are times when he misses him. "If he knows they are deporting me, he will kill himself," he says in accelerated Spanish. She suggested that he return to the Mexican side when the Democratic government began sending migrants to Haiti. “What do I know what I'm going to do there if I don't have a family. Pure delinquency, pure bad things? ”, He reflects. US agents trying to catch Haitians like him from atop a horse gave him another reason to cross the river again. And he decided to back down when he saw a woman giving birth at four in the morning on dirty cardboard: "She was in labor and was not assisted by a doctor."

When immigration agents entered the camp on the Mexican side this Thursday, their eyes were opened, alert, and they stayed that way all day.

They offered him a house, food, shelter and assistance in Tapachula, 2,200 kilometers away.

He accepted at that time.

Although he knows that it will not be as promised because he was already there and saw the city collapsed.

"I want to live life like every human being," he says.

At 23 years old and single, he shuffles and believes that he could lose out if he returns to the United States.

Sonia Jeudy sings to God

The music that comes out of the cars of a Christian association gives some a reason to dance.

The song relates a passage from the Bible, when Moses opens the Red Sea for the inhabitants of Israel to pass through.

Sonia Jeudy, 29, sings it, rocks with her child in her arms and cries.

Perhaps you hope someone will open the way for you too.

His sister crossed the same border five months ago and is now in California.

But this time, the authorities have closed the road to thousands of migrants.

"Because we are black," Sonia believes.

Sonia Jeudy and her son rest on a mattress on the floor.Teresa de Miguel

The woman combs her son and does not lower her guard.

He screams if someone reaches into his things.

He runs out to find cardboard to isolate himself from the floor, where he sleeps in the open.

One, from a decorating house, announces a “home in harmony”.

Sonia's body hurts and also the center of her chest.

She did not want to make this trip, according to her account, but followed her husband, as her Bible says.

Now she breastfeeds her baby.

The next night he will jump into the river when the authorities have already entered the camp and cut the rope that connects the two ends.

"They yell at us, they say bad words to us"

A T-shirt covers Wilson Joseph's head and only part of his oval face is visible. For days, the national and international press have been recording what happens in the camp and Wilson does not want to be recognized on television. That is why it also gives a false name. No one knows that he, his wife, and his daughter are there, sleeping in a tent that fills with dry land. That they are eating what they are given, that there are no bathrooms, that the temperature exceeds 35 degrees. He worked in Chile in a paint factory; he cooked roast with lemon and salt. Now you wait to charge your phone's battery in a socket from which as many cables hang as you have been able to connect.

Haiti is a two-hour plane ride from Miami, but Wilson hasn't lived there for years.

In that country, he has no one left.

He wants to get to the United States, where he has nine cousins, but he left the camp on the American side after a few days: “They yell at us, they swear at us, they give us bread and a bottle of water for the whole day.

When they release the water [from a dam], the river runs strong ”.

On the Mexican side, the raids began and not so many people come out to buy food in the city anymore.

A man who slept in the tent next door was arrested when he went to get milk for his daughter and is now in Tabasco without her.

So Wilson does not move even though the camp has begun to empty.

The Haitian migrant camp in Ciudad Acuña (Mexico), last Wednesday.Teresa de Miguel

Clarita Jones' smile

Clarita Jones has a big, wide-lipped smile that softens when she begins to tell her story. She lived in Chile without papers and now she is with her husband almost 100 meters from the Rio Grande. He began traveling in July and three months later he does not forget the Darien jungle, which separates Colombia and Panama. There he knew that if he found a closed tent it would mean that there were dead inside: two, five, four… He also remembers a woman with a broken arm climbing up a slope with a child: “The son fell off. He had to go and leave it ”.

She is a tall, robust woman with small eyes and close-fitting hair. You haven't seen your children in seven years. They live in the Dominican Republic and do not know that she is trying to get to the United States illegally. "In case something happens to me," he explains. Of what he earned working, 200 dollars, he sent them 150 every month. If he had to go hungry, it was his turn. In Haiti there were only their parents. The 2010 earthquake knocked their house down and Clarita was unable to bury them. The earthquake of last August left her homeless again in that country, one that she had ordered to be built. He describes it as pretty, big, pink and white, with a roof. Anyway, why is he going to return to Haiti, he wonders: “They entered the president's house and killed him. There is no security for a president, what about us? and my children?".

Clarita Jones, who does not want to show her face for fear that her daughters will recognize her.Teresa de Miguel

His voice is exhausted.

The only memories he had of that house were taken by the agents who stole his cell phone in Mexico.

For this reason, perhaps, he mistrusts the authorities.

When the first patrols entered the camp in Ciudad Acuña on Thursday, he crossed the Rio Grande at dawn, with the water on his chest.

It was dark, it was cold.

In the United States, she was authorized to request international protection and while this is being resolved, she has met with a part of her family.

Now he is in Miami.

His story is as big as a book, he says.

But of the last few months he doesn't have a pretty story to tell.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-09-27

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