Wanda Pérez Torrescano, a total of 53 people, 40 of whom are men and 13 women, cannot hide her anger at the commemoration of the immigrants who were found dead in an abandoned truck on Monday, 27/6 in San Antonio, Texas, and those who later died in the city’s hospitals.
“We honor people whose families still don’t know they’re dead, waiting for the phone call, ‘Mom, I’m on the border, I’m fine,'” he says energetically, microphone in hand. , in front of dozens of people gathered Wednesday (6/29) at Travis Park in downtown San Antonio.
“And I know this because I’m on the other end of the phone.”
Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, he is not the only one to feel that the greatest remembered immigration tragedy on American soil was his own.
Just as earnestly, Jessica from Honduras recalled how the day before, immigrants stood in place in a truck with 40°C outside, left without water or air conditioning.
“I came here in a truck when I was 14 and I lost consciousness from the heat,” he said emotionally during the night watch.
When asked later if he would like to tell his story to the BBC, he replied:
“This continues to stir up a lot of emotions in me. I still have a lot to process and I don’t feel ready to go into the details.”
Image: Getty Images
While all this was happening in San Antonio’s historic downtown, other people were paying tribute to the dead where the truck was located: the dusty road between a lumber yard and a railroad track, in a field full of auto parts shops.
The first two crosses—in color—by Angelita Olvera and Debra Ponce, the daughter of a Bolivian girl, on Tuesday, said, “We have to be careful with Texas, because as we know, civil rights will change.”
Since then, that little corner has been filled with flowers and candles, posters asking for respect and solidarity, placed by Gabriela of Honduras and her two daughters. Artist Roberto Márquez, who traveled to the United States from Tijuana 40 years ago, paints a mural reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.
Yes, there is always immigration in this city, which is only 250 km north of the Mexican border.
Key city for migrant smuggling
The experts and organizations the BBC has turned to for this report – as well as officials who have asked not to be named – describe the city of 2.5 million as a “transit hub”. traversing the country from north to south and east to west.
Edward Reyna, a security guard at the lumber company a few meters from where the truck was dropped off, forgot how many times he had seen Mexicans and Central Americans, among other nationalities, get off the passing train.
“I knew sooner or later someone would get hurt,” he told the BBC.
“The cartels that brought them don’t care.”
Image: Playback/BBC
The immigrants he encounters during his work shifts are those who are not caught by the immigration authorities.
In May, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) recorded almost 240,000 “bright”, a third more than in the same month of the previous year.
That’s despite Texas Governor Republican Greg Abbott issuing a “disaster declaration” allowing him to launch Operation Lone Star in March 2021 and deploy the National Guard at the border two months later.
All this to try to stop the increase in border crossings that US President Joe Biden attributes to his immigration policies.
Image: Getty Images
But Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera told the BBC that some of the migrants continue to arrive and travel across the state, hiding in trucks, a fairly common business in this border area and elsewhere.
A professor at George Mason University in Correra-Cabrera, Virginia, has spent years working on migration routes from Nuevo Laredo in Mexico to Laredo in the United States and through the most important land customs point for goods in the United States. worked. hemisphere.
This alone makes it impossible to control all the loads passing over the bridge every day, the expert explains.
“There are no official figures, but it is estimated that less than 5% of the cargoes are inspected.”
But he also explains that smuggling migrants by trucks doesn’t have to start in Mexico. In some cases, drug dealers have already picked them up in trucks on the Texas side, Correra-Cabrera says, based on testimonies she’s compiled.
Congressman Henry Cuellar told the AP news agency that Department of Homeland Security investigators who led the investigation believed they were in the abandoned truck case on Monday.
those who go; leftovers
Immigration officials confirm that most immigrants arriving in San Antonio simply pass through, no matter how they arrive, no matter what mode of transport. They usually stay overnight in accommodation provided by different organizations supporting them, at the airport or bus station.
But there are those who stay, like Lemi, a Cuban who came and worked as a taxi driver in the city four years ago. His plan is to go to Florida next year with his wife and 11-month-old son.
Or his compatriot José, who, after going through great hardships in the Darién jungle between Colombia and Panama, in Ecuador and other countries he passed through, crossed into the United States in May to surrender to immigration.
As soon as he was released, he took a bus to San Antonio, where he told me his story.
Image: Playback/BBC
Another person staying in the city, at least for now, is Carlos, a 34-year-old Venezuelan immigrant who has crossed many countries to get there.
When he reached Mexico’s southern border, he decided that the best way to go north was by motorcycle.
“I had an accident in Monclova (a Mexican city on the US border), they operated on me, and now I have a sign here,” she says, pointing to her left thigh.
Gaining strength in his leg to work, he is at Pousada Guadalupe, run by Father Phil Ley.
Image: Playback/BBC
The Indiana native established his first immigrant shelter in San Antonio 16 years ago.
“I started sending people out of hospitals because they were injured or because they were diabetic and needed dialysis. Until a lawyer (specializing in immigration) asked me for permission to accommodate a client who had just turned 18 and could no longer stay at ICE (Immigration and Customs Control Centre) for minors),” he tells the BBC.
“This is how he reached out to other lawyers,” he says, and it turns out that his shelter is specifically for young immigrants. On Wednesday, there were 21 people there.
“There will be another one tomorrow, and another one on Saturday,” he says.
When asked what happened to the abandoned truck with the immigrants in it, he says it was a disgrace that “made him sad and at the same time infuriated”.
These are the same sentiments Wanda Pérez shared with those present at the Wednesday vigil, those who felt the tragedy the way they did, everyone who spoke to the BBC for this story and described the incident as “mass murder”. .
“Tragedies like this make the problem visible, suggesting how complex these networks are, how many people and how much money are involved, and how little we know about all this,” says researcher Correra-Cabrera.
– This text was published at https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-61983349.
source: Noticias
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