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The Plight of the Undocumented

By Jim Harney, Ellsworth American Contributor
August 31, 2006

Recently, Ellsworth police stopped a car without a license plate. They arrested five Mexican undocumented workers. I tried to visit them in the Penobscot County jail. A jail official told me they were gone: she had no idea where they were taken. I called Homeland Security and left a message that I’d like to visit them if they were still in Maine. I never got a call. The migrant workers quickly disappeared; perhaps deported.

Few know about a world of hardship and sometimes death endured by migrants as they follow out-of-the-way trails in Central America and Mexico to get to the United States to find work. Danger follows them every step of the way: when it strikes it opens up a welter of emotion for them, as it did with me when I heard them talk about it.

A 24-year-old Honduran man outlined a world of risk and danger he stepped into when he began his journey to find work in the United States. Outside a shelter in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, he tells me that 19 of his friends died in a three-month period as they journeyed north, starting out in El Salvador. Trauma envelops his body as he tells me about the reality of gangs. A Salvadoran gang murdered five of his friends. Trains killed five others, one, a 14-year-old girl cut in half when she fell asleep and fell off. Others perished in Arizona’s sprawling deadly desert. The 24-year-old Honduran was the only survivor.

The biggest risk facing those headed north, particularly Central Americans, is in jumping freight trains — the only mode of transportation available to them. Without documentation, they can’t take passenger trains or buses. From Mexico’s southern border-city of Tapachula in Chiapas, it’s a blister-creating seven-day walk to reach the tracks in Arriaga where freight trains head north. There I met migrants sleeping on the tracks waiting to jump the “iron monster,” as a Salvadoran ready to deal with it said.

A Mexican advocate for migrants, Doña Olga Sanchez, knows their world better than most. The Mexican Government Human Rights Commission honored her for her commitment to those who nearly lost their lives dealing with the “monster.” Seventeen years ago, she saw children, pregnant women and the elderly in hospitals without arms and legs. They slipped off of trains. It so moved her that she opened the Good Shepherd Shelter in Tapachula.

In the shelter that quarters 30 limb-less Central Americans, one Salvadoran migrant told me that it was worth facing death to get to the United States so that he could put in an honest day’s work; earn an income to feed his family. He never made it: the “monster” grabbed his right arm and leg. He phoned his wife and told her he was wounded. He didn’t mention the nature of the wound. His wife found out about it when she saw a photo of her husband in a Salvadoran newspaper.

Tragedy, couched in an ongoing war against the poor, strikes families when they see their local currencies plummet: for peasants it means more sweat for less money. Here we have some of the ingredients that push human beings into a “wall of death” along the border on which faith communities have placed crosses representing those who have fallen trying to cross. Many never experience the dream. Last year, more than 300 died trying to cross the Arizona desert that ate them up in the cold of night or heat of day, or drowned them in flash floods.

If U.S. citizens knew about this dangerous journey migrants travel — rarely documented — perhaps conversations in the House and Senate might include a more hospitable plan for the fate of 12 million people in our country who don’t have papers. Some legislators might even use the word “amnesty”; the undocumented deserve it.

Journey to el Norte

By Jim Harney, Times Record Contributor
May 11, 2006

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation making it a felony for Mexicans and Central Americans to cross into the United States to find work. And currently, the U.S. Senate is in the middle of intense debate about the lives of some 12.5 million undocumented people living in our country. In the past two weeks, these migrants have "come out of the shadows," and for good. They are a power to be reckoned with.

Both the legislation approved by the House and that under consideration by the Senate miss the root causes as to why between 500,000 and 1 million women, men and children risk their lives to come to the United States to find work to support their families. It's legislation without a face behind it and it comes out of a context of a worldwide battle against terrorism.

After a month along the borders between the United States and Mexico and between Mexico and Guatemala from mid-October to mid-November I've been trying to tie the issue of migration of undocumented human beings into a globalization process that wreaks havoc on them and the planet. I'm trying to understand hedge funds, which are investment firms that cater to extremely rich people with excess money to risk in financial markets. I'm also trying to understand a financial instrument known as "derivatives," which some call "the crack cocaine of financial markets" and others call "an economics of mass destruction." (Financial Times).

I'm trying to relate these realities to the lives of people that I met in Mexico last fall; for these financial instruments are at the core of the uprooting of people from their homes. But first, let's talk about the people I met on this trip. Father Cayetano Cabrera, a priest I met in Agua Prieta, Mexico, across from Douglas, Ariz., who works with migrants, says the migration flows aren't going to decrease to the United States. If anything, he said, they are going to increase to unprecedented numbers. He's a priest who for more than 10 years has been working with migrants headed to the United States. In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across from El Paso, Texas, I came across a fellow from Honduras, who was in the throws of trauma as a result of his journey to the United States, where he was grabbed and sent to Mexico. He told me a story that I flash back to constantly I suppose I always will and that is part of taking the risk of going into parts of the world where most of the people live who are humiliated and pummeled by the movement of vast sums of money, $2.5 trillion each and every day, throughout the world. The Honduran exhibited trauma tears coming down his face, taking his T-shirt and wiping his face as he tried to come up with a sentence. He spoke to me about 19 of his friends from Honduras who met in El Salvador and started the journey to "el Norte." They never made it to the United States. He was the only one to survive a two-and-a-half-month trip. Here's what happened to the others: Five were shot to death by the Mara Salvatrucha, a gang that came about as a result of a 10-year war in El Salvador in the 1980s, which took hold in Los Angeles and spread to El Salvador; now the gang controls the trains headed to el Norte in Guatemala and Mexico. Others who hopped onto trains but couldn't stay awake, fell off and died; one girl cut in half. Others died of thirst crossing New Mexico's desert. All of this is happening in this millennium and the priest I met in Agua Prieta, Mexico, says it's bound to get worse.

There's so much to tell, so much to bounce off the gospels. I come out of a liberation theology tradition. I discern power in words like "justice," "peace," "mercy" and "love" in a world that excludes most of humanity under the guise of a market theology that prioritizes property over people, especially financial property. The undocumented immigrants of the United States are outside of the market, but not totally for these migrants send back money to their families in Mexico, Central America, South America. Last year, undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. sent back $20 billion to their relatives living in poverty in Mexico. Some of the remittance money is sent with messages encouraging other relatives to head north. And those who take that risk often come up against the "los federals" in Mexico, immigration authorities, gangs, all of whom demand money. So the remittances become profit for all who prey on the immigrants. Remittances, thus, keep economies from collapsing: in Mexico it's the second largest source of dollars coming into the country after the sale of oil. And bankers realize the migrant population is a source of wealth; thus, they try to bring migrants into the banking system. Wells Fargo has 500,000 migrants doing business with them. These bankers know that there are big profits to be made from these human beings uprooted from their homes by the hurricane of globalization. We're talking about $169 billion in remittances sent back to families in countries of origin, more than all of the foreign direct investments sent to Third World countries.

Shelter for migrants

When I'm outside of the United States traveling in these Third World countries through Latin America I get a chance to see some heavy stuff. I went to a shelter in Tapachula, along the Guatemalan border in Mexico, and there I stood before the present-day crucified. In the Shelter of the Good Shepherd, I met its founder, Doña Olga Sanchez, who has been the "mother" of migrants for 17 years. "Seventeen years ago I walked into the hospital in Tapachula, and I saw children without arms, pregnant women without legs, adults without limbs," she said. " I was horrified. I started a shelter, and have been doing it for 17 years." She received a prize from the Mexican government for her humanitarian work, and with that money opened up a new shelter built by those with missing limbs. I saw young men missing legs, arms, feet all because of the trains, the "Iron Monster" as one Salvadoran told me close to the tracks where he waited to jump a train. I spoke with Carlos Bonila, a Guatemalan who sat in a wheelchair. "Last year I broke up with my woman friend," he said. "Three months later my mother died. Two months after that, this happened." He lowered his eyes to an empty space to look at where he once had legs. Roberto Antonio Vila Lobos, 32, lets me take his photo in his bed, his left arm holding his head up as he poses for a picture with his right-arm stump clearly visible. The photo doesn't show him with a right leg missing. His smile covers the planet.

Chasing a dream

All the faces that keep on flashing in my face these I think of as I walk, try to pray and do the work of walking in a world where the economic systems that drive globalization have forgotten almost half of humanity. Roberto continued his story, telling me how he had called his wife shortly after the accident and told her that he "was wounded." She found out the details later when a photographer took his picture and it appeared in a Salvadoran newspaper and she saw it. She came to the shelter and told him she loved him. When he gets a prosthesis he still hopes to make it to the United States. What courage! Here's a guy who's lost an arm and leg trying to get into the United States… and he still hasn't given up on that dream! I heard migrants speak with a smile about the "American dream" -- El Sueno Norteamericano -- and how they hoped to be part of it. They're even willing to risk their lives to achieve that dream. For others, chasing the dream turned into a nightmare. Migrants who talked with me said some make it, others don't, in the dangerous trip to partake in the dream they pick up from the media. Most of those who take the trip walk with nothing but the clothes they wear. A few have a backpack. A Salvadoran, Ricardo, befriended me and guided me around the world of the tracks in Arriaga, a four-and-a-half bus trip from Tapachula. Since Hurricane Stan, Ricardo and other Central Americans walked six days to get to the freight cars in Arriaga. "This is my second attempt," Ricardo said. "While on a bus the first time, the bus driver demanded $10 from me and when I refused to give it to him he reported me. The immigration authorities grabbed me and I was deported." But this is one of the most powerful of all the experiences: It's almost like a "trope," a Greek word that means "swerving off the main path," and this definitely was a swerve off the path that the market managers talk about in their pro-globalization and market economy pronouncements.

Shelter of Mercy

It's a profound learning experience: To be with the poor as my instructors. But it's so challenging to be open to the lessons the humiliated of the planet so freely share with me in the classroom of life. In this case, the classroom was a sidewalk in front of a migrant shelter, called the Shelter of Mercy in Arriaga, Mexico. I arrived at the "classroom" at almost 11 p.m. I had been told earlier in the day, before taking a bus there, that there would be a shelter in Arriaga filled with people resting, ready to jump on the trains. The shelter was closed up tight, not a light lit in the place. Not a sound. Not a door open. I came across two men sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the place that offers hospitality to the undocumented. I approached them, introduced myself, and tell them that I'm a gringo. They both tell me to knock on the door of the shelter, that I won't have any problem and I'll have a place to stay for the night. I share with them that I don't want to exercise "gringo privilege" and asked if it would be alright to sleep with them. They said "Yes." I lay down on the sidewalk next to them, my backpack as a pillow, and look up into the heavens lit with stars and drop into slumber. Sometime later, somebody nudges me. It's one of the men I slept next to. He looks me square in the face. In his hand he has a huge yogurt-like container. It's sealed. He opens it and he offers me some delicious fish soup. I offer to help pay for it. The man takes offense and invites me to eat it with him and his friend. So I get a chance to talk about the work that I'm doing. They tell me that they've been on the road for nearly a month, that they're headed to el Norte. We go back to sleep. At 6 a.m., the door of the shelter opens and I get a chance to meet some of the 40 or so people who rest there to recoup energy to move on in their journey of three weeks to a month to get to the Mexico-United States border. Five Salvadorans invite me to have breakfast with them -- a repeat of the previous night's experience. My new Salvadoran friends wouldn't let me pay for the soup, either. Migrants feeding a gringo -- yet, we have the United States building a 700-mile wall to keep them out.