Border is no Disney for asylum seekers
What wouldn’t you do to save your children?
Thuan Le Elston: What wouldn’t you do to try to save your children?
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas — Our family had just walked through the black iron gate of the border port of exit when we saw a Mexican man struggling to load boxes and packages onto a small cart. Among them were Easter baskets. We were on our kids’ spring break right before the holy day.
“Do you need any help?” my husband asked.
“Oh yes, please,” the man said. “What is all this?” I asked. “Donations for our Easter festival in the village,” he said.
Behind us, a Texan woman came out with a big bag of toys, cups and other party supplies. “Thank you for helping,” she told us. “They have so little.”
We grabbed the bags and packages that didn’t fit on the man’s cart and followed him down a dirt path toward the Rio Grande. There, our family joined other tourists paying $5 each to take a row boat across the big brown river to the Mexican village of Boquillas, home to 250 folks whose closest grocery store and gas station on the Mexico side are at least 150 miles away.
Not exactly the border amusement park that President Donald Trump described Sunday: “It’s like Disneyland now . ... More families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.”
Actually, illegal immigration across the southern border remains lower than the peak years of the 1990s and 2000s, when the Border Patrol apprehended more than a million undocumented immigrants annually. Then, the majority of undocumented crossers were Mexican males looking for work and trying to evade arrest. Now, most are Central American families seeking out Border Patrol agents and turning themselves in to request asylum.
The asylum process will be more difficult and costly if Trump gets his way. On Monday, he proposed charging people a fee to apply for refuge and denying them work permits while they wait.
In March, Border Patrol agents made 92,607 apprehensions, and a record 53,077 were of family members. Both numbers were up from February’s 66,884 apprehensions and 36,531 family members. Are these families seeking asylum in the USA because, as Trump said Sunday, “our economy is so good”?
❚ Vice President Mike Pence has said that “Central America has been plagued ... by vicious gangs and vast criminal organizations.”
❚ In 2016, according to the United Nations, El Salvador had the highest “intentional homicide” rate — 82.8 per 10,000 people, followed by Honduras’ rate of 56.5; Guatemala was 10th at 27.3.
❚ At our high school outside Washington, D.C., there’s a family being threatened with deportation to El Salvador — though the son has a long scar from a machete that a gang had plunged into his back.
What kind of parents trek their children from Central America through Mexico into the USA and near certain apprehension? Desperate ones.
The Rio Grande is a natural border, more than half of the 2,000-mile U.S.Mexico boundary. Big Bend’s Boquillas port of entry isn’t known for illegal immigration. When my family went through the port on April 17, there was one Customs and Border Protection agent, who explained what Mexican products we couldn’t bring back (certain minerals and all pork products). Everyone must have passports and/or visas, and screening is done on two automated kiosks monitored by CBP officers working in El Paso.
Last year, just over 19,000 people crossed this port into Texas. “I am unaware of any violations occurring at Boquillas during that time frame,” CBP spokesman Roger Maier emailed me.
An estimated 86% of the Boquillas crossers are U.S. citizens. The next largest group is Mexican citizens — about 7%, with the required work or tourist visas.
After our family took the boat to Boquillas, we declined offers of a ride on donkeys or trucks the half-mile into the village. On that hot, sunny day, we walked the dirt road. In Boquillas, there were two tourist restaurants. My husband wanted to give our business to a place that catered to the villagers but couldn’t find any, so we lunched at the one overlooking the Rio Grande. The restaurants and shops didn’t take credit cards. We paid the last of our cash to a young woman for a drive back to the river in her truck. She said she has never crossed into the USA because she doesn’t have a visa.
As our row boat returned to the U.S. side, behind us was another one carrying two Mexicans and a load of empty plastic gas containers. These men from this village, so isolated from the nearest Mexican shopping center, were lucky enough to have U.S. visas and were crossing into Texas to buy gas and groceries for themselves and their relatives and friends. What do you know. It’s a small world after all.