Emma Obando-Funes and her young children cannot hide their joy after finally leaving the migrant camp on the border between Mexico and the United States, where they took refuge for more than a year, after an arduous journey from Honduras.
“Happy, I am very happy, because now we have a home, a bed and we have a plate of food and my children get up and have breakfast,” said Obando-Funes.
Emma, a 43-year-old single mother and her children were among the first immigrants to leave the camps.
This after President Biden suspended the strict immigration measures established by the Trump administration, which directed asylum seekers to wait for a response to their cases outside the United States.
According to Amy Belsher, a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, there are still more than 20,000 migrants in Mexico without any legal support waiting to enter the country.
“It is very, very difficult to pursue your asylum case from another country without lawyers, without access to your family,” Belsher explained.
Emma left Honduras with three of her five children to escape the violence. She told us that she had been attacked and threatened with death on several occasions in a small grocery store with which she made a living.
“The fear of dying, crime, extortion and poverty. That is why I left Honduras fleeing, I was desperate. Because I could see my children die or they could kill me and my children could be left alone. “
With the sale of his business and after mortgaging his house, he got $ 10,000 to get to the United States.
When detained in Mexico, they were forced to sleep on the street … and then, for almost a year, in tents at the migrant camp in Matamoros.
“It was very stressful for me to see my son suffer and I could not buy his medicines,” said Obando-Funes.
In the camp they depended on Good Samaritans who donated food.
But the living conditions and violence around them terrified him.
“My worst experience in Mexico was having to do with my children how they tortured some people, who broke their bones in their arms and see how they sexually abused my partner with whom I shared, I will never forget that,” explained Obando- Funes.
As the procedures to obtain asylum for her family progress, Emma feels hopeful about this new opportunity.
“Very happy, grateful to God, grateful to life for being in this place. I feel free, I feel safe. “
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