Illegal imigration
Aug 10, 2014 09:38:31 #
This was in today's San Antonio paper. It talks about the train in Mexico called "The Beast" because of so many deaths and injuries on the train.
One of the shelters is run by a Church and the priest said, it cannot continue, it must end, they do not have the money to keep it going.
That is where the US is now, we cannot be the Papa and Mama to the world.
Freight trains blow by as migrants wait
By Aaron Nelsen
August 9, 2014 | Updated: August 10, 2014 12:01am
Image 1 out of 26
Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News
TENOSIQUE, Mexico Long stretches of tedium spent languishing under the tropical sun on this nation's southern border are interrupted by the exuberant promise of a train.
A lone voice is quickly drowned out by a chorus of frantic shouting, and a mad dash for the rails ensues as scores of able-bodied men kick up a cloud of dirt in their wake. Alas, the northbound freight train does not stop.
In fact, nine days have come and gone since the train commonly known as La Bestia, The Beast last stopped in Tenosique. Hundreds of U.S.-bound migrants from Central America hoping to hitch a ride atop the cars are growing desperate as they wait at a shelter that gets more full by the day.
We'll wait to see if the train stops. Or we'll have to seek refuge in Mexico, because we have no other option, said Jaime Miranda, 31, who missed boarding the last train July 31.
After traveling for two days from El Salvador, he, his wife and two sons have been holed up at the shelter for 10 days.
Untold thousands of migrants count on the trains, which have routinely stopped here and in other border cities to carry them through Mexico. Recently, however, when it does appear, The Beast, so-called for the lives and limbs of passengers it has claimed, races straight through town.
Local immigration officials confided to the staff of La 72, a migrant shelter near the train tracks, to expect the infrequent stops to persist, in addition to random checkpoints as Mexico ratchets up immigration enforcement, particularly at its border with Guatemala.
With record numbers of Central Americans crossing the U.S border illegally, parts of Mexico are similarly overrun with immigrants streaming through or getting stranded.
Since October, U.S. Border Patrol has detained about 230,000 immigrants at the Southwest border, mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including 63,000 unaccompanied children.
But even as the numbers in South Texas, where most of people cross, dropped from a peak of 300 per day in June to about 100 in recent weeks, the U.S. continues to speed the deportation of Central American families, while pressing Mexico to do more to stem the tide of young migrants.
So far this year, Mexican immigration authorities have deported more than 60,000 Central Americans, compared to 89,000 last year. But it is Mexico's pledge to stop migrants from riding precariously atop freight trains that has been felt most acutely in Tenosique.
La 72, named in remembrance of the 2010 massacre of Central American migrants in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, has filled with bed**ggled migrants who've traveled too far to turn back and more arrive every day.
They linger in the shade, speaking wistfully of the places they are going and the people they long to see. And they listen for the whistle of train that does not come.
I'm looking for my son, said Blanca Lidia Valenzuela, a 60-year-old grandmother from Honduras with blue eyes and a crown of white hair. I climb the train to look for him, but it hasn't stopped.
Valenzuela's son disappeared while trying to migrate through Mexico a decade ago, and she has been searching for him ever since. She carries laminated photos, humbly asking if anyone has seen him, but no one has.
I don't think I'll find him, she admits, covering her face to conceal her tears. But I can't go back to my country ... I don't know what else to do."
If the train does stop, Arciel Mejilla, 26, hopes it will carry him closer to his mother in Las Vegas, who he hasn't seen in more than six years.
While in the U.S., Mejilla stole a car when he was 17, was prosecuted and deported a year later. He snuck back into the U.S. but was deported a second time, and until recently had been eking out a living in Honduras, he said.
I did my time, Mejilla said, patting a scar that ran across his stomach, the result of a knife wound years before. I miss my mom, I want to see her again.
Running out of food
Felix Anastacio Martin Garcia, 40, put everything on the line to make it to the U.S. He sold his home in Cuba for $3,000 and bought a plane ticket to Ecuador, one of the few countries that doesn't require Cubans to enter with a visa.
Over the past three months, he has crossed the Andes and taken an overloaded boat to a remote Pacific island off the coast of Panama. He was detained by immigration officials in Nicaragua and Honduras, and he walked through a tropical rain forest until his feet blistered.
To break up the monotony at the shelter, men played cards under palapas, coquettish teenagers flirted, and children, some still in diapers, gave chase across the grounds. Martin, accompanied by two Cubans whom he met in Costa Rica on a construction site, used a razor blade to g***m eyebrows and beards; Martin shaved his head.
I have to make it, my wife and daughters are counting on me, Martin said, explaining the only way Cubans can claim asylum in the U.S. is to enter by land. If the train isn't going to stop, then we'll join the caravan of people when it leaves.
Late last week, the number of migrants at La 72 swelled to nearly 200, two to four times more than normal, and the shelter almost ran out of food for all of them, prompting Friar Aurelio Montero Vesquez to address the issue on everyone's mind.
The train isn't stopping here, he said. Everyone has to decide what they will do.
Friar Aurelio informed the dozens of men, women and families, idling for days in the sweltering heat, that while it appeared the train was skipping over Tenosique, it had stopped in Palenque, at least a two-hour drive to the west.
Unfortunately, the shelter could not provide for them indefinitely, he continued. Sooner or later, they all would have to move on.
Privately, Friar Aurelio and the Salvadoran consul voiced concern over the roving immigration checkpoints. Without the train, people will take more perilous routes north or try their luck with Mexican law enforcement, whose reputation for extorting immigrants is well documented.
Afterward, Miranda said he feared his family members were near a breaking point. They had left everything behind when a gang in San Salvador threatened to k**l his sons, ages 8 and 4, unless he paid $16,000 for their protection. It was an impossible sum, so they fled, taking two days to get to the border.
Miranda cradled his youngest son, Kevin, who refused to eat the unfamiliar food. Kevin, whose arms were covered with mosquito bites, whispered in his father's ear, asking when he could go home and play with his toys again.
On a recent morning, dozens of men lined the tracks, their heads hung low after another false alarm, and the empty promise of a train.
The train still doesn't stop, Friar Aurelio muttered, as he sat alone at La 72, his one good eye framed by the curved bill of his purple cap.
anelsen@express-news.net
One of the shelters is run by a Church and the priest said, it cannot continue, it must end, they do not have the money to keep it going.
That is where the US is now, we cannot be the Papa and Mama to the world.
Freight trains blow by as migrants wait
By Aaron Nelsen
August 9, 2014 | Updated: August 10, 2014 12:01am
Image 1 out of 26
Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News
TENOSIQUE, Mexico Long stretches of tedium spent languishing under the tropical sun on this nation's southern border are interrupted by the exuberant promise of a train.
A lone voice is quickly drowned out by a chorus of frantic shouting, and a mad dash for the rails ensues as scores of able-bodied men kick up a cloud of dirt in their wake. Alas, the northbound freight train does not stop.
In fact, nine days have come and gone since the train commonly known as La Bestia, The Beast last stopped in Tenosique. Hundreds of U.S.-bound migrants from Central America hoping to hitch a ride atop the cars are growing desperate as they wait at a shelter that gets more full by the day.
We'll wait to see if the train stops. Or we'll have to seek refuge in Mexico, because we have no other option, said Jaime Miranda, 31, who missed boarding the last train July 31.
After traveling for two days from El Salvador, he, his wife and two sons have been holed up at the shelter for 10 days.
Untold thousands of migrants count on the trains, which have routinely stopped here and in other border cities to carry them through Mexico. Recently, however, when it does appear, The Beast, so-called for the lives and limbs of passengers it has claimed, races straight through town.
Local immigration officials confided to the staff of La 72, a migrant shelter near the train tracks, to expect the infrequent stops to persist, in addition to random checkpoints as Mexico ratchets up immigration enforcement, particularly at its border with Guatemala.
With record numbers of Central Americans crossing the U.S border illegally, parts of Mexico are similarly overrun with immigrants streaming through or getting stranded.
Since October, U.S. Border Patrol has detained about 230,000 immigrants at the Southwest border, mainly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including 63,000 unaccompanied children.
But even as the numbers in South Texas, where most of people cross, dropped from a peak of 300 per day in June to about 100 in recent weeks, the U.S. continues to speed the deportation of Central American families, while pressing Mexico to do more to stem the tide of young migrants.
So far this year, Mexican immigration authorities have deported more than 60,000 Central Americans, compared to 89,000 last year. But it is Mexico's pledge to stop migrants from riding precariously atop freight trains that has been felt most acutely in Tenosique.
La 72, named in remembrance of the 2010 massacre of Central American migrants in the northern border state of Tamaulipas, has filled with bed**ggled migrants who've traveled too far to turn back and more arrive every day.
They linger in the shade, speaking wistfully of the places they are going and the people they long to see. And they listen for the whistle of train that does not come.
I'm looking for my son, said Blanca Lidia Valenzuela, a 60-year-old grandmother from Honduras with blue eyes and a crown of white hair. I climb the train to look for him, but it hasn't stopped.
Valenzuela's son disappeared while trying to migrate through Mexico a decade ago, and she has been searching for him ever since. She carries laminated photos, humbly asking if anyone has seen him, but no one has.
I don't think I'll find him, she admits, covering her face to conceal her tears. But I can't go back to my country ... I don't know what else to do."
If the train does stop, Arciel Mejilla, 26, hopes it will carry him closer to his mother in Las Vegas, who he hasn't seen in more than six years.
While in the U.S., Mejilla stole a car when he was 17, was prosecuted and deported a year later. He snuck back into the U.S. but was deported a second time, and until recently had been eking out a living in Honduras, he said.
I did my time, Mejilla said, patting a scar that ran across his stomach, the result of a knife wound years before. I miss my mom, I want to see her again.
Running out of food
Felix Anastacio Martin Garcia, 40, put everything on the line to make it to the U.S. He sold his home in Cuba for $3,000 and bought a plane ticket to Ecuador, one of the few countries that doesn't require Cubans to enter with a visa.
Over the past three months, he has crossed the Andes and taken an overloaded boat to a remote Pacific island off the coast of Panama. He was detained by immigration officials in Nicaragua and Honduras, and he walked through a tropical rain forest until his feet blistered.
To break up the monotony at the shelter, men played cards under palapas, coquettish teenagers flirted, and children, some still in diapers, gave chase across the grounds. Martin, accompanied by two Cubans whom he met in Costa Rica on a construction site, used a razor blade to g***m eyebrows and beards; Martin shaved his head.
I have to make it, my wife and daughters are counting on me, Martin said, explaining the only way Cubans can claim asylum in the U.S. is to enter by land. If the train isn't going to stop, then we'll join the caravan of people when it leaves.
Late last week, the number of migrants at La 72 swelled to nearly 200, two to four times more than normal, and the shelter almost ran out of food for all of them, prompting Friar Aurelio Montero Vesquez to address the issue on everyone's mind.
The train isn't stopping here, he said. Everyone has to decide what they will do.
Friar Aurelio informed the dozens of men, women and families, idling for days in the sweltering heat, that while it appeared the train was skipping over Tenosique, it had stopped in Palenque, at least a two-hour drive to the west.
Unfortunately, the shelter could not provide for them indefinitely, he continued. Sooner or later, they all would have to move on.
Privately, Friar Aurelio and the Salvadoran consul voiced concern over the roving immigration checkpoints. Without the train, people will take more perilous routes north or try their luck with Mexican law enforcement, whose reputation for extorting immigrants is well documented.
Afterward, Miranda said he feared his family members were near a breaking point. They had left everything behind when a gang in San Salvador threatened to k**l his sons, ages 8 and 4, unless he paid $16,000 for their protection. It was an impossible sum, so they fled, taking two days to get to the border.
Miranda cradled his youngest son, Kevin, who refused to eat the unfamiliar food. Kevin, whose arms were covered with mosquito bites, whispered in his father's ear, asking when he could go home and play with his toys again.
On a recent morning, dozens of men lined the tracks, their heads hung low after another false alarm, and the empty promise of a train.
The train still doesn't stop, Friar Aurelio muttered, as he sat alone at La 72, his one good eye framed by the curved bill of his purple cap.
anelsen@express-news.net
Aug 10, 2014 09:50:25 #
JetJock wrote:
This was in today's San Antonio paper. It talks ab... (show quote)
You know, Russia had an "Iron Curtain" to keep people in. We need a "Cactus Curtain" to keep people out.
Aug 10, 2014 10:25:37 #
Unclet
Loc: Amarillo, Tx
JetJock wrote:
This was in today's San Antonio paper. It talks ab... (show quote)
Go home and fix your country, and quit trying to come to ours so you can make it like yours.
Aug 10, 2014 10:41:16 #
Unclet wrote:
Go home and fix your country, and quit trying to come to ours so you can make it like yours.
I still like the solution I proposed: If you just HAVE to have immigrants, go to Iraq and bring in some Kurds. Send our wetbacks to Iraq and let them worry about it. It's an elegant solution; we get solid citizens, and ISIS gets the gang bangers.
Aug 10, 2014 11:24:36 #
LAPhil
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Loki wrote:
With really sharp needles.You know, Russia had an "Iron Curtain" to keep people in. We need a "Cactus Curtain" to keep people out.
Aug 10, 2014 11:38:15 #
Loki wrote:
I still like the solution I proposed: If you just HAVE to have immigrants, go to Iraq and bring in some Kurds. Send our wetbacks to Iraq and let them worry about it. It's an elegant solution; we get solid citizens, and ISIS gets the gang bangers.
Sounds good to me.
Aug 10, 2014 11:41:21 #
JetJock wrote:
This was in today's San Antonio paper. It talks ab... (show quote)
I don't give a damn what their problems are!!!! Stay the hell out of our Country!!!!!!!!
Aug 10, 2014 11:42:04 #
LAPhil
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Had enough wrote:
I don't give a damn what their problems are!!!! Stay the hell out of our Country!!!!!!!!
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:
Aug 11, 2014 11:54:03 #
laphil I agree stay out.....................but we have all those BUREAUCRATIC personnel following you know who. Whata you going to do with them?
Aug 11, 2014 13:55:06 #
LAPhil
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
marjorie wrote:
?laphil I agree stay out.....................but we have all those BUREAUCRATIC personnel following you know who. Whata you going to do with them?
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