Drowning in the River

Many do not reach the riverbank. They drown.

The Rio Grande is huge, deceiving and unpredictable. Underneath its apparently placid surface, strong currents and whirlpools intertwine with trash and branches. The muddy bottom sucks you down. It is the color of dark coffee, impenetrable and contaminated, it is impossible to see your feet through it. Its rocks tear at your skin. In the last nine months, 33 people have drowned just in the Laredo area. Almost all of them were immigrants.

This is the river that Orbin, a 15-year-old Honduran boy, crossed one afternoon. I met him soon after “the crossing,” as many call the tribulation of swimming from Mexico to the United States.

Orbin has suffered it all. He never met his father; his mother left San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for the United States when he was only six years old, and the gangs killed his best friend right in front of his eyes. “They hit him in the head and he died,” he said, and afterward they threatened him with death. After 25 days traveling completely alone through Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, he only had to cross the river to arrive in the United States and begin a new life.

“Yes, I was afraid,” Orbin confessed to me. “But I was more afraid of staying at home in Honduras. They wanted me to join the gang,” he told me, referring to the dangerous gang known as 18. “And since I told them no, they told me that in one month something would happen to me.”

Orbin didn’t wait; with a little bit of money that his uncle gave him, he came to the United States. He also wanted to reunite with his mother, who lives in Florida. He has not seen her in nine years.

The story of Maria is similar. Members of the gang known as Los Chinos in Honduras tried to rape her 17-year-old daughter Ana. A neighbor intervened and “they killed him,” said Ana, crying.

Maria knew immediately what to do: “When they told me they would kill us,” she said, “it scared me so much that I decided to leave.” She traveled with Ana and her other daughter Juana, who is 14 years old. She can’t believe that they did it with only $300 and no “coyote.” The three women crossed the Rio Grande in their underwear while holding black plastic bags between their teeth, which held their few valuables.

With the help of the United States Border Patrol, I also crossed the river in order to become familiar with what immigrants such as Orbin, Maria, Ana and Juana experienced. (The TV news report can be found here.) And due to the strong currents, I stopped only 200 meters away from my departure point. To cross the river is very difficult for an adult and almost impossible for a child. But what brings a child to risk their life? Children are fleeing violence, gangs and extreme poverty. None of this is new to Central America. Neither is it news that an old law, from 2008, prohibits the immediate deportation of unaccompanied children that come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. And that, in practice, means that the unofficial policy of the United States is to not deport Central American children.

Therefore, what is new? What’s new is that Central American families clearly understand that immigration reform has died in the United States Congress and that President Obama, in some way, is inclined to help them. Obama has already legally protected more than half a million “dreamers” (undocumented students), and he could do it again for millions more by executive action.

But even if this protection is not certain, there is the emotional factor. This is of utmost importance in order to understand the actual crisis the children at the border face. Central American families endure years of separation, with mothers and fathers in the U.S. and their children left with aunts, uncles and grandparents in the poorest countries of the hemisphere.

With the certainty ahead that nothing will be legally resolved soon, they have made the desperate decision to send their children despite the risks. For them, there was nothing left to wait for. The “rumor” that children would not be deported back to Central America has turned out to be true — there have been very few deportations among the 24,000 children arrested in 2013 — and the southern border is filling up with minors.

None of this would happen with immigration reform. These are the consequences of a lack of action on the part of politicians that are more worried about policy than about the well-being of the country. And this is not the final crisis. More immigrants will continue to arrive illegally, children and adults, until we find a way to do it in an orderly fashion with a new law.

Meanwhile, more Central American children such as those I met in Laredo will continue to risk their lives in the cruel waters of the Rio Grande. The risk of drowning in the river is nothing compared to what they have left behind.

P.S. The names of the immigrants that I interviewed are not real. They requested that I change them for fear of reprisals by the gangs, even here in the United States.