Women migrantsyoung and attractive, are disappearing in an area of the Arizona desert, their families denounced the rescue group Capellanes del Desierto, according to a report by the Spanish agency efe.
The group has counted at least a dozen missing in recent months and fears that the women have fallen into a human trafficking network.
“Only this week we have just received the report of two other cases, with these we already have 12,” Oscar Andrade, director of the humanitarian organization, told reporter María León.
The most alarming thing is that they all follow the same pattern: young, physically attractive women who disappeared in the same region of the Arizona desert.
The relatives have related that the “coyotes” claim to have left the woman in the desert because she could no longer continue, but later they change the version arguing that the most likely thing is that the Border Patrol arrested them.
For years Chaplains of the Desert have worked in the search for the disappeared. They go out into the desert to look for them based on the coordinates or signals that the human traffickers have given to the families.
This year the number of people reported missing has increased considerably compared to 2021, according to this report. “We have been receiving up to 20 reports per week,” he said.
In some cases the group has been successful in finding migrants in conjunction with Border Patrol and providing first aid. In others they have only found lifeless bodies.
However, in the particular cases of these women they have not found any trace of them.
“We contacted both the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office (ICE) to see if there is a woman with the physical characteristics, just in case the person changed their name, but nothing,” Andrade lamented.
One of the disappeared is Lizet Jazmín Baryas, a 23-year-old Salvadoran immigrant who has not been heard from since last May after a second attempt to cross the Arizona desert. She was trying to meet with her husband Carlos Alexander Arias, who is waiting for her in the United States.
“She tried to cross once but was arrested and deported, then she spoke to me and said she would try again. From then on I didn’t hear from her anymore,” Carlos Alexander Arias told the Efe journalist. The last thing he received from her was a photograph of her in camouflage gear ready to cross the desert.
“The smuggler told me that they were discovered by a Border Patrol helicopter, that they all ran, and that from then on they never saw her again. However, now the coyote doesn’t even answer my phone,” said the immigrant who lives in Chicago. The young woman herself had paid $14,000 to be taken to the United States.
“My biggest fear is that she is in the hands of the mafia, that they are prostituting her, that she has fallen into a white-trafficking network,” Arias said.
These fears are not unfounded, since Andrade assures that in his role as chaplain he has spoken with several coyotes to try to get clues about what could be happening or how to find these young women.
“These coyotes have told me that the ‘young girls’, especially from countries like Venezuela and Brazil, are ‘big business’ for human traffickers or that simply if one of the ‘bosses’ likes one of the girls, well, they are remain,” he said.
Andrade stated that they have even doubted that these young women have really crossed the border or disappeared in Mexico.
In the case of Arias’s wife, he assures that the traffickers sent him a photo of the young woman, but it was a setup, demanding $6,000 to give him information about her whereabouts, assuring that the young woman was in the hands of a criminal group.
“Her family paid the money, however they only lied to us, now they are again contacting her mother in El Salvador, but they do not give any real proof that she is alive,” Arias said.
Daniel Hernández, spokesman for the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, reported that every time they receive a report of a missing person, they send resources to start their search.
Swanton Sector’s October numbers are in! 334 apprehensions from 19 different countries in the first month of the fiscal year; a 676% increase from last year! The upward trend continues.
Thank you for reporting suspicious border related activity: 1-800-689-3362.@CBP@USBPChief pic.twitter.com/w3vW1jFod2
— Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia (@USBPChiefSWB) November 23, 2022
“Unfortunately immigrants are just ‘commodity’ for human traffickers, we know that their hearts are not tempted to abandon them to their fate.” The federal agent indicated that they have had reports of women who have been raped by the “coyote” while they were being transported.
In the midst of the current migratory wave, both Chaplains of the Desert and the Border Patrol urge migrants not to risk their lives in the hands of coyotes.
Andrade warns women to try to stay in constant contact with family members and to call 911 if they are in danger, but advises them to try to present their asylum cases at ports of entry.
Maria Leon/Efe/OnCuba.
