Dressed in his Superman hoodie, a 5-year-old Honduran boy looked out of an airplane window, pointing at the sky and apparently unable to believe that such a large plane was reaching the clouds.
A few days ago, Yancarlos Amaya was walking between the muddy bank of a river after having crossed the Rio Grande and reached the US side of the border with Mexico. His mother, Celestina Ramírez, 28, said they turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents and subsequently spent several hours in custody, one night under a bridge and three more days in a detention center.
Now, they were on board a flight from Harlingen, Texas, to Houston, and later they would take a connecting flight to Baltimore, where his brother’s family lives.
Although traveling by plane seemed like a luxury compared to her trip through Central America and Mexico and a detention center for migrants, Ramírez was still nervous because it was her first time traveling by plane. He also hadn’t seen his brother in over a decade.
“We haven’t seen each other for 14 years,” Ramírez said. He was just 14 years old when his brother left Honduras.
Their brother, Marco Ramírez, and other relatives were waiting for them in Baltimore. When Yancarlos got on the moving walkway at the airport, he took hold of the railing, surprised that it was also moving.
“I hadn’t seen this,” he said as he bent down to place his hands on the moving surface.
Celestina Ramírez said she felt calmer being with her family while going through US asylum procedures. His son turns 6 in September, and many families with children slightly older than Yancarlos have been expelled under an order implemented by the government of former President Donald Trump that is related to the coronavirus pandemic and that President Joe Biden has kept in force.
“It’s already here, thank God. The road is very hard. There are many barriers ”, commented Marco Ramírez. I am “very happy because we already have it here near the house,” he said.
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