MATAMOROS, Mexico.- “Why have we been fleeing from our country? There children are sold cocaine (at school) and you have to pay a war tax every week. If they don’t pay it, they will kill them.” This story seems told by one of the adults waiting in Mexico for the resolution of their asylum applications in the United States. But a little 9-year-old named Genesis tells it with words that show the viacrucis that thousands of Central Americans dreamed of leaving behind when they fled violence in their countries of origin.
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When they arrived in Mexico, they encountered, however, a new odyssey for the policy of the Donald Trump government to send asylum seekers to that country in a program called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Since Washington announced the creation of these MPPs, more than 55,000 asylum seekers have been sent to Mexican territory as their cases progress. Meanwhile, human rights organizations working at the border have denounced that the plan it isolates migrants in dangerous cities and makes it almost impossible to get legal help.
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“We are afraid, I am afraid because I am afraid that they will kill us all,” Genesis says, saying the word fear over and over again.
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“Sometimes I am encouraged to be here, but sometimes there is rain and heat, and children are not studying. There are children who are sick and parents cannot buy medicine because they are not working,” the girl tells Real America, a Univision News program that explores the country through immigration, while touring the place that has become home.
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It is an impromptu camp in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, with tents raised by wooden sticks, portable toilets and outdoor kitchens. There, dozens of migrants bathe in the river, while children spend their days looking for animals in those waters and playing ball on the dusty ground.
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“Maybe Trump has no mercy on us”
“It hurts a lot that they are going through ugly things because they don’t deserve it. They are minors and they are not to blame for the things that are happening,” laments Yamali, the mother of Genesis, with teary eyes. “We have been fleeing from Honduras and we have been fleeing for our lives,” he explains.
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Despite the uncertainty that permeates their lives, Genesis feels that not everything is lost. His words reflect it when he says that once a week he can study.
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“Sunday always comes a Sunday school (…) so I can learn” to, in the future, work when “one wants.” “You have to have faith, things are going to change, you have to pray to God and ask him to things change, “he says with maturity.
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