When 149 migrants had been escorted onto a bridge by U.S. Border Patrol brokers, that they had no concept the place they had been being taken. Many collapsed, crying, after they discovered they had been again in Mexico.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — They got here in teams of 30, youngsters dangling from adults’ arms, escorted on Thursday afternoon by United States Border Patrol brokers throughout the Paso del Norte bridge till they reached the midway level. Then, they had been handed off to Mexican authorities.
“Where are we?” one father requested a journalist with The New York Times.
“Ciudad Juárez,” got here the reply.
The father, who hadn’t been instructed by U.S. officers the place he and the remaining of the group of migrants had been being taken, seemed bewildered.
“Mexico,” the journalist clarified.
Faces contorted from confusion to anguish. Many of the dad and mom began sobbing, tears of frustration falling on the kids they cradled.
“They cheated us!” yelled one father or mother.
“They promised they would help us!” wailed one other.
Most of the 149 migrants being taken throughout the bridge on Thursday had crossed into the United States from Reynosa, a border metropolis in northern Mexico, the place that they had been detained by U.S. Border Patrol officers. They had been then flown 600 miles to El Paso, Texas, the place they had been placed on buses, pushed to the border and walked to the bridge.
None had been knowledgeable they had been being despatched again into Mexico.
As they walked throughout the bridge connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, it dawned on them that every part that they had risked on their journey — their lives, the well-being of their youngsters, the loans that they had bankrupted themselves to take out to be smuggled into the United States — was falling aside.
Below, Elvin Bautista Pérez, 26, from Honduras, together with his daughter, Mía, 5, making an attempt to succeed in his household by textual content after being deported.
Vilma Iris Peraza, 28, struggled to hold Erick, her 2-year-old little one, pant-less in a grimy diaper, and her daughter Adriana, 5.
Adriana was standing in a pool of vomit on the prime of the bridge, as Mexican officers surrounded them, the braids that Ms. Peraza had so diligently woven into her daughter’s hair a frizzy mess. The mom had needed her daughter to look her finest for his or her new life in America.
Ms. Peraza tried to consolation Adriana and provides her sips of water as Erick wiggled in her arms. Finally, she collapsed on the bridge, hugged her youngsters and wept.
“We couldn’t get through, my love,” Ms. Peraza instructed her husband on the telephone, when she was lastly capable of join. “Here we are in Mexico, all crying. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
The household, from Copán, Honduras, had tried to cross days earlier than to reunite with Ms. Peraza’s husband in Nashville. They had been a household divided ever since he had left two years in the past to work in Tennessee. Smugglers had charged them $12,000 to cross — equal to virtually three years’ wage in Honduras — financial savings that now amounted to nothing as they sat huddled collectively on the bridge.
“I just want to reconnect with my husband to give our children a better future,” Ms. Peraza stated. “In my country, there is a lot of poverty, nothing can be done.”
It had taken many of the migrants a month or extra to finish the damaging trek from Central America to the United States.
The perilous journey was value it, many had reasoned, so long as they might settle in America. They didn’t need to go away their properties, however their international locations had damaged underneath corrupt governments that uncared for them and allowed gangs to rule the streets.
Now they had been in Mexico and had solely dangerous choices: give all of it up and return house or attempt to illegally cross once more. Both decisions left them on the mercy of Mexican legal networks.
Another migrant requested a Times journalist in regards to the state of affairs in Juárez, one of Mexico’s most harmful border cities.
“How is this town?” he requested. “Is it safe to go out?”
Migrants being loaded onto vans to be taken to shelters in Juárez.
Elvin Bautista Pérez, 26, clutched his daughter as he struggled to get reception on his telephone to inform relations the disappointing information.
He and Mía, 5, had left their house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in January, setting off for the United States.
Mr. Bautista stated he by no means had needed to be an immigrant, had by no means needed to depart his household to be taught a brand new language and new customs. He had discovered a option to stay with the poverty and corruption that wracked Honduras ever since he was a baby. But then two powerful hurricanes slammed into Honduras inside as many weeks, leaving him jobless and homeless in November.
“They deceived us because in the United States they never told us that they were going to deport us,” Mr. Bautista stated.
Ms. Peraza, under, along with her youngsters.
Mexican officers ushered the migrants off the bridge and into their places of work, the place they had been registered and instructed they’d be positioned in shelters till deported again house.
But the shelters had been for these whose limits of despair had been reached. Among the group of migrants, there have been nonetheless the hopeful, those that had not run out of cash or the dedication to attempt to cross once more. Instead of filling out the federal government kinds, they slipped out of the chaotic places of work onto the streets of Juárez.
A yellow sports activities automotive appeared out of nowhere, and a household was ushered into the again seat. They had known as their coyote, or human smuggler, to choose them up proper on the authorities places of work. Once everybody packed into the automotive — as flashy because the coyotes are brazen — the household sped off, to try the perilous crossing as soon as once more.
