Migrant families are being dumped in US border cities

Estela Tomas Felipe was one of the more than 1,500 migrants released in El Paso this week. At the Greyhound station, Felipe, with her one-year-old daughter strapped to her back, was in good spirits, and heading to Birmingham, Alabama, to meet her husband, who left Guatemala two months ago.

She left her poor farming community in Guatemala 21 days ago. There, “they take women and then they rape them or kill them,” she said as she explained why she and her daughter made the harrowing trip by truck and other vehicles through Mexico and into the United States. “That’s why I came here.”

Following the deaths of two Guatemalan children this month who were in Customs and Border Protection custody, advocates expressed concern that US immigration authorities were rushing migrants through the asylum process.

Felipe Gómez Alonzo, 8, who died Christmas Eve, tested positive for influenza B, according to the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator. 

Jakelin Caal, 7, also Guatemalan, died December 8 at an El Paso children’s hospital after being detained with her father and while preparing to travel by bus to a Border Patrol station in New Mexico.

The chaos at the border has also been complicated by the partial government shutdown over President Donald Trump’s insistence on including funds for a border wall in the federal budget.

[USA Today]

This entry was posted in Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.