Finding a way in through Mexico
For some Hondurans, no border wall can stand in their way
Forward or back. “Hey, get up!” There was just enough light to see. Three men. Black bandannas on their ❚ ❚ faces. “Walk this way.” By force, the two migrants were hustled to the gate of the cemetery. Into a black SUV. ❚ ❚ It sped toward the edge of town. The men in black bandannas began their lecture. “Look, the thing is that ❚ ❚ you both need to know how things run around here.” “Here, you have to pay a fee to be able to cross.” The ❚ ❚ two migrants had no money, no possessions. They had already decided they were never going south, back to Honduras. Now, they were not sure they would live to go north. ❚
The two men did not know each other in Tegucigalpa, but they left home under the same cloud.
Norlan Yadier Garcia Castro had gone to the U.S. from Honduras to look for work. After two years, he hit a pedestrian in a traffic accident. He was arrested and deported.
Nelson Gabriel Valladares Funes was forced to join a gang before he was a teenager.
For both, the future was bleak. Honduras has one of the lowest family incomes of any country in Latin America. It has the world’s highest homicide rate.
So they left. Not together, not at the same time, but for the same destination.
They walked back roads, took buses when they could, and rode the freight train known as la be
stia — the beast.
It’s the fastest route north but also the most dangerous. Migrants go without food as they ride the train. They face mutilation if they fall off and extortion from criminal gangs that charge them to be on board.
They joined a river of migrants making the journey.
Since early this decade, record numbers of Central Americans have headed to the U.S. through Mexico, fleeing violence and poverty at home. Swelled by women and children, their numbers peaked in 2014.
In spite of the United States’ tough talk about enforcement and a border wall, the number of people fleeing the so-called Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has remained steady since then. But fewer reach the U.S. border.
THE LONG ROAD NORTH
The route to Nogales, Sonora, took Norlan a month.
Along the way, he tried to dodge Mexican officials and bribed them when he had to. He endured extortion attempts and regular beatings at the hands of drug gangs because he didn’t have cash to give them.
As he rode la bestia, he saw others, who had no money, thrown from the moving train.
Nelson took even longer. He left home on Christmas Day and had run out of cash by the time he reached Mexico’s southern border. He begged and did odd jobs to feed himself.
When he arrived in Nogales, in late May, he tried to cross into the U.S. but was caught by the Border Patrol. Because he had no criminal record in the U.S., agents sent him back to Mexico, warning that if they caught him again he’d be sent to jail.
After meeting each other for the first time in Nogales, Norlan, 20, and Nelson, 21, decided to stick together.
Norlan says nothing will stop people from pursuing a better life in the U.S.: not a more dangerous route north, not being kidnapped by a cartel and certainly not a border wall.
The two were waiting only on the weather. June is too hot to risk a Sonoran Desert crossing. The late-summer monsoon, they hoped, with its rain and cloud cover, would bring the time for them to jump the fence.
But in the night came three men wearing black bandannas, and Norlan and Nelson were stuffed into the black SUV, headed away from the border.
What happened that night in June cannot be verified through investigative reports or official records. Immigrants with no legal right to be in Mexico do not call police, who may be no more aid to them than the cartels that may already control their fate.
So Norlan and Nelson’s story can only be told through the accounts both men later gave the USA TODAY Network.
A HARROWING ORDEAL
At a cartel safe house outside Nogales, the kidnappers placed them in separate, cell-like rooms.
Who are your friends and relatives in the United States? the men wanted to know. They demanded names, phone numbers, looking for someone they might call and demand money in exchange for the two migrants’ freedom. They searched wallets and bags but turned up nothing.
Nelson told the kidnappers his mother was ill and he was headed north because he needed money to buy her medicine. The men didn’t believe him and warned him to wait.
But when they left, Nelson noticed the door wasn’t locked. He slipped out, made his way to Norlan’s cell and unlocked the door.
They spotted an open window.
REFUGE IN A CEMETERY
It’s a few days after the escape from the kidnappers. Nelson and Norlan are at a municipal cemetery, close to the border and where city workers turn a blind eye to the small groups of mi- grants and deportees staying there until it’s their time to move on. They’re sleeping among the graves, a short walk from the nearest U.S. port of entry.
Even though the masked men might return, the two feel safe among the tombs.
“You feel that they’re watching over you,” he says of those who lie beneath them.
The Hondurans haven’t reported their kidnapping to the authorities. Norlan says he believes he knows why they were targeted. On a recent morning, they had walked to the border fence near the Mariposa international crossing.
But cartels say they — not the migrants — decide who gets to the fence.
“Since we didn’t know that, they came for us,” he says. “And now they think that’s where we will cross, and for that you have to pay.”
The fee is $500 a person. But Norlan and Nelson have no money.
Both men say they’re determined to attempt a crossing. Norlan could not make a living in Honduras. Nelson fears the gang he fled would kill him if he returned. There is no going back.
“Thousands have died in the desert,” Norlan says. “And if death doesn’t stop us, will a wall?”
As night approaches, clouds gather on the horizon. The first storm of the monsoon is on its way.