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TIJUANA, Mexico – When they arrived in the United States from Mexico in the early 1980s, my parents had never heard of the American Dream, but they wanted what it had to offer. They were looking for a better life with more job opportunities.
Forty years later, they are intimately familiar with the concept and claim to have fulfilled their version of the dream. My father says he has a better family, home and life than he could have had in Mexico.
My sisters and I also benefit from our parents’ aspirations. My mother says, “You guys are back be successfulnot to survive “. In other words, we are here to succeed, not to survive.
Today’s migrants seek a similar dream, but have less power over how this happens. Last week, migrants were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, saying they were promised jobs that never existed and lied about their final destination.
The so-called American Dream remains a captivating story among migrants south of the border. However, the focus has changed. For many, simply staying alive has become the main reason for traveling to the United States.
Migrants wait longer and face instant rejection at the border
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In a cramped tin-roofed shelter with rows of tents lined up next to each other, Jesús Ariel puts on his shoes to start the day as his seven-year-old son blows bubbles and tries to keep them afloat.
“We left our country with that purpose, in order to make that dream come true,” he says.
Father and son are staying at Movimiento Juventud 2000, one of about 20 migrant reception centers in Tijuana, awaiting their chance to enter the United States to apply for asylum. They fled here from Honduras after Jesús Ariel was attacked by gang members.
“The truth is very dangerous [en Honduras]. By the will of God I’m here, “he says.” And so we come up with that dream, of being able to do something – have a little house, maybe. “
The shelter, which for now they call home, is located in the red light district of the Zona Norte of Tijuana, a section of the city where prostitution is legal and cartels are known to operate. However, Jesús Ariel says he feels comfortable here because he and his son sleep together in their tent. Although they have only been in this refuge for a few days, they have been in Mexico for more than a year.
This is not unusual, says Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of UC San Diego’s Center for United States-Mexico Studies.
“In the past, the shelters were for migrants who stayed three or four or five days and then passed through the United States,” he says. “Now it’s different. Migrants stay months, even years, in the reception centers.”
The reasons are varied. Some people are awaiting legal appointments, while others have applied for asylum in the United States and this process can now drag on for months. Tijuana has become one of the main waiting centers for migrants.
Many have already attempted to cross the border but have been rejected due to title 42. The pandemic public health order invoked under President Trump, and still in place under President Biden, prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the border and instead it allows border patrol officers to remove them from the United States.
Nearly 1.8 million expulsions of migrants occurred during the first two years of the policy. The relapse rate for those attempting to cross has increased from 7% in 2019 to 27% in 2021.
Jesús Ariel and his son are among those repeat offenders who have tried to cross more than once. For them, there is too much to lose to give up now.
Tijuana migrants often cite gang violence, death threats or extortion as the reason they left their homes and fear to return. It is difficult to estimate how many migrants currently live in Tijuana, as they are constantly on the move, but Fernández de Castro estimates that there are around 35,000 migrants here awaiting asylum in the United States.
“It is very difficult to separate fear from economic need,” he says of the motivation of migrants. “I will say that the two join”.
But the American dream will not come true for everyone.
More than 280,000 asylum applications were filed in the United States in 2020. Of these, fewer than 32,000 were accepted.
It is a dangerous journey that can end in a mass grave
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Not everyone believes in the American dream. Lourdes Lizardi thinks it is a lie. The migrant activist has spent the past 28 years helping people find refuge in Tijuana and she has seen the migrants’ hopes dashed as they sometimes face a cruel reality.
“They come for that famous American dream that sometimes turns into the dream of hell,” he says.
Lizardi says the situation has become more dangerous for migrants over the past 15 years, especially as cartels have grown in power and influence.
Previously, migrants were occasionally victims of crime in Tijuana, he says. Now they are the target, as cartels see them as easy prey for drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping. Recently, four shelters in Tijuana installed panic buttons that migrants can use to warn of danger nearby.
Lizardi has seen people die during her travels to the United States and she doesn’t think pursuing this dream is worth the risk. This month alone, eight migrants were found dead trying to cross the border near Eagle Pass, TX.
Those who die in the state of Baja California go to the medical laboratory of Doctor Cesar Raúl González Vaca. He is director of the state legal service, which each year receives approximately 1,600 bodies found in Tijuana, Mexicali and Tecate.
“These are border towns where there are often bodies of people with a migrant background who die trying to cross or for some other violent cause,” he says.
Most of the bodies belong to people from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and parts of the interior of the Mexican Republic. When they are not claimed by family or friends, they end up in mass graves. In Tijuana, 10 bodies are buried together in a single grave, and around 120 graves are added each year.
In recent years, Dr. Vaca’s laboratory has begun to have better documentation of where the bodies are buried, in case someone comes looking for the remains of a loved one.
But for those who cannot be identified, their journey from distant places across Central and South America ends with their unnamed bodies dumped in mass graves outside Tijuana, with no trace of their families.
Parents are making impossible decisions
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Inside the Embajadores de Jesús refuge, which is located at the end of a dirt road full of holes in Tijuana, children play loudly. Above the loungers, they smile and dance to the rhythm that comes out of the speakers. Outside, others are concentrated as they drop marbles on the dirt road.
Everyone is in his own world. That is, until they have to decide which shoes to take to continue their travels in the United States.
This is what Daniel Gutiérrez’s daughter had to consider one morning: were her shoes, which were a bit loose, comfortable enough to keep going up and down the hills?
“And it hit us really hard that morning because we didn’t know he’d thought about it,” he says. “Her distress about her was that she was approaching the day when we would do the same thing again.”
The family is preparing for the third attempt to seek asylum, but Gutierrez says he and his wife would never have foreseen the psychological trauma their children would suffer.
Gutierrez and his family are also escaping gang violence. Their business was extorted in Guatemala, and after a gang didn’t get what they wanted, they received death threats. They seek safety but no longer want to compromise their children’s mental health. Gutierrez and his wife have promised their children that this will be their last attempt to enter the United States.
“We are not looking for anything special,” says Gutierrez. “What we are really looking for is to give our children a better education.”
Although they would like to make a new life in the United States, they will settle in Tijuana as their new home.
Back at the Movimiento Juventud 2000 refuge, Sarai Raudales is also worried about her children.
She fled Honduras with her husband and two young children after facing threats on two fronts: Her husband’s auto shop was extorted by a gang and her children received death threats after her ex-husband killed a Police officer.
Raudales had less than four hours to leave his home after receiving death threats. They took what they could and took the first bus to Mexico. With such short notice, Raudales says she couldn’t afford bus tickets for the whole family and feared her 12-year-old daughter would be kidnapped or forced into sex trafficking along the way, so the decision was made to leave her behind. family. “I’m scared [de] I’ll never see her again, “says Raudales.” I’m afraid that, since I brought these guys, they’ll be angry with her too. “
Raudales is determined to do whatever it takes to keep her children safe, even if it means giving it up.
“If, given the case, I couldn’t make it? Well, I’d decide that the government would stay with them and take care of them,” he says. “Because in Honduras they will kill them. So, as a mother, I prefer them to be fine.”
“Most of us come because we are running away. Because we all have difficult cases. In other words, no one wants to leave the house.”
Raudales wants the Americans to understand that this is not an easy decision.
“You feel safe in your home, in your home where you grew up, where you were born,” she says. “What happens is that when we left, I left my mother, my brothers, everyone. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to see them again.”
There are some that offer a Mexican dream
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Although American life has been imperfect, my parents say they chose the right dream for themselves. Others, such as Daniel Gutiérrez’s family, may not have this option and will instead have to create a new life south of the border.
Lourdes Lizardi, the migrant activist, says this is not necessarily a bad thing.
“Everyone is involved in the American dream,” he says. “When there are Mexican dreams, when there are dreams, this Canadian, Chinese dreams, all right?”
Montserrat Caballero Ramírez, Mayor of Tijuana, also encourages migrants to choose his city as a place to call home and tries to reassure them that he can maintain peace and security there.
“I think this theme of the American dream was very romantic,” says the mayor. “And we need to speak clearly to citizens around the world, that dreams can be built wherever you are.”
“I think it’s a safe city. We don’t have the peace we would like in the whole country, it would be lying to them, but we aim for stability.”
For some, Tijuana may offer enough security and stability to build a satisfying life. But one way or another, others will continue to try to make that famous American dream come true.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To find out more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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