Central Americans pursue U.S. dream despite crackdown
SAN MARCOS, GUATEMALA >> A near-death experience in the Arizona desert a year ago won’t deter Francisco Pérez from another attempt to migrate to the U.S., nor will an increased police presence in southern Mexico.
The 23-year-old Guatemalan teacher and auto mechanic hopes to set out again soon to repay the $7,000 he owes from his first trip, when he and two other young men got lost for a week in the desert before being rescued by the U.S. border patrol.
On the seventh day, facing severe dehydration, the group resorted to drinking their own urine.
“Each of us urinated in a bottle and then strained it with the corner of our pants,” said Pérez, rubbing his hands together as he recalled the day he thought would be his last.
Pérez spent two days in a U.S. hospital before being returned to Guatemala. During his short stay in Arizona, though, he caught a glimpse of houses with manicured lawns, orderly roads and fancy stores. Those images are like a siren’s song, calling him to what he believes would be a better life.
Before setting out for the U.S., he earned $100 a month as a teacher and had a girlfriend. Now she is with somebody else and he’s helping out in his father’s auto repair shop in his hometown of San Marcos, just a few miles from the border with Mexico.
“In the end I lost everything,” Pérez said.
Mexico has promised to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops to its southern border on Monday to deter Central Americans from trekking toward the American dream. About 1 percent of Guatemala’s population of some 16 million people have left the country this year, part of a wave of Central Americans fleeing poverty, violence and drought.
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended 132,887 migrants in May, the highest monthly figure in more than a decade. Many Central American migrants in recent months have been requesting asylum. The United States has returned more than 10,000 U.S. asylum seekers to Mexico since January under a program that requires migrants to wait in that country while their cases wind through U.S. courts. Thousands of Central Americans have also applied for asylum to start new lives in Mexico.
On Friday, Mexican officials vowed to step up migration enforcement to avoid U.S. tariffs on all Mexican imports. Increased enforcement could mean more inspections of buses, raids on hotels and arrests to disrupt peoplesmuggling networks. Last week, Mexico arrested two migration activists and froze the accounts of more than two dozen people al