An orphan’s long road to the U.S. — and the Pope
WASHINGTON— The journey that will bring Juan Jose Vasquez within steps of Pope Francis began with a text message that bore asingle word: “Son.” The message was from Vasquez’s mother, whom Honduran drug traffickers had just kidnapped. It was the last thing she would say to him.
The next morning, news reached Vasquez in his hometown that his parents’ bodies had been found along the side of a road. Both had been shot to death. Next came a flurry of media coverage, followed by threats of more violence against Vasquez’s family. A seed of an idea quickly bloomed into a realization. He had to flee. He had to get out of the country, get out of Central America, get to the United States — to Maryland, where he had family.
The story of Vasquez, now 18 and a high school sophomore in Beltsville, Md., reflects that of thousands of other unaccompanied minors whose flight from violence in Central America led to an immigration crisis last summer.
But Vasquez’s journey will have a different ending. On Sept. 24, he’ll have the chance to meet with Francis at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Washington.
At a time when the issue of immigration has become increasingly contentious in the wake of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s political rise, Catholic leaders hope Francis will advocate for child immigrants during his U.S. tour. Vasquez, who crossed two countries last year to arrive alone and penniless at the Texas border, belongs to a demographic that moved Francis to action.
In July last year, as tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossed the border, Francis called the situation a “humanitarian emergency” that “requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected.”
Wire thin, with spiky hair and a shy grin, Vazquez is secretive about his past, not because he’s embarrassed but because he wants to be a normal kid. He takes English classes, plays midfield on a local soccer team and uploads selfie after selfie to his Facebook page.
He was born in a single-storey house along the Guatemalan border to parents who were little more than children. His mom, Rosa, was 15. His dad, Edgar, was 20. Theirs was an honest living, built around the Bible, church on Sundays and a business that produced cement blocks for area construction projects.
Vasquez was not a strong student, so at the age of 12, he stopped going to school so he could learn the family business, which was booming.
But in a region defined by drugs and desperation, prosperity can make people vulnerable. The family’s business — with its cars and construction materials — made it a target for exploitation by gangs, who forced Rosa and Edgar into the drug business.
By 2012, Rosa was calling her sister, Marta
Vasquez, who now takes care of her nephew. Rosa said she wanted to kill herself, Marta would later tell case workers with Catholic Charities.
We need to get out of here, Rosa told her sister again and again. We need to get out of here.
In September 2012, Edgar and Rosa, who was pregnant, travelled to central Honduras. “Next thing I heard were rumours that my parents had been kidnapped during that trip,” Vasquez said. At some point, he looked down at his phone. There was a message from his mom. “Son,” it said. “I think she was trying to text me as she fought for her life, but that’s all the text said,” Vasquez later wrote in a court filing.
Vasquez didn’t know what to do. He was15 and suddenly found himself the head of a household that included his three younger siblings.
He tried to carry on the family business, but it attracted too much attention. “I started receiving text messages from unknown people asking me if I wanted to transport drugs hidden in the cement blocks that I sold so I could make a lot of money,” he said. “I never responded.”
The business soon failed, but that didn’t stop the messages. His grandfather, whose car had just been stolen, got a note saying that “if he wanted to see more blood, he could come try to get the car himself.”
Vasquez decided then to leave. If he disappeared, he thought, perhaps the drug gangs would leave his family alone. So his grandfather gave him nearly $1,700, which he used to pay a young smuggler from Guatemala.
Vasquez was terrified. He’d heard horror stories about Mexico, where unaccompanied minors had disappeared. Every night over the two-week journey in 2014, he said, he and the other teens gathered. Together, hugging one another, they asked God for help.
“We asked Him to accompany us every moment on the roads, because the road is very dangerous, especially going through Mexico,” he said. “Of course it was Him who made it possible to get here.”
That’s why Vasquez is so nervous about the chance to speak with Pope Francis. There are so many things he wants to tell him — that he’s a symbol for people like him, that his faith stewarded him through his dangerous journey, that he’s thankful — but he’s not sure he’ll have the courage to speak.
“Well, not anyone gets to meet the Pope,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe this feeling.”