Victor Camacho
Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, October 16, 2022, p. 5
Mistreated on both sides of the border, Venezuelan migrants who were expelled from the United States to Mexican territory tell the day the uncertainty that they have experienced in recent days, the hunger and humiliation that they experienced, and the current anguish, since they received a 20-day deadline to leave the country.
They expelled 42 of us, because if they had really deported us, they would have done it directly to Venezuela
expresses Nataly de los Ángeles Prieto Morales, originally from Maracaibo, who tearfully asks the US government for a new opportunity to show that we are not bad people, that we simply want to work
.
At the facilities of the Secretariat of Inclusion and Social Welfare of Mexico City, where 14 of that group managed to arrive on Friday, he comments that they feel helpless and alone. “We don’t have anyone, we have looked for refuge in several places -in the country’s capital-, but they simply tell us that they can’t have us, that there are many of us.”
In the early hours of October 12, after a long pilgrimage from their native Venezuela, they crossed the United States border and surrendered to the immigration authorities.
They believed that they had achieved their dream, but it was not so. They were transferred to a shelter in Texas, where They made us throw away our wet clothes, our backpacks, and they left us with a bag, an ID, and they put a bracelet on us with our name on it. Then they took our fingerprints, photo
recalls José Apóstol.
Insults in English and Spanish
The worst treatment was from US immigration agents of Latino origin. “They kept us stopped for about an hour and a half and one of those officers told his companions in English: ‘Take this shit away, there’s another group to come,’” recalled Paolo Gutiérrez.
The insults were also in Spanish. Son of a bitch, are you gross?
another agent yelled at him. In the shelter the intimidating orders continued: Go ahead, they are in the United States, they are not tourists, they are illegal!
Nataly remembers that they were in that place for less than a day, since at four in the afternoon they were taken out of the shelter, without informing them where they would be transferred. They were taken to Piedras Negras, Coahuila, and Mexican immigration agents were already waiting for them.
The saddest and most unfair thing is that the authorities of the Mexican government did not communicate anything to us either, despite our desperation. They put us on a bus and just said we’d go south
. His destination was the immigration station of Morelia. He claims that their belongings were stolen. I was left without clothes, they took 100 dollars from another colleague
.
In Morelia they were given the document ordering their definitive departure from the country valid for 20 calendar days
. We were all in shockcrying, in the certainty that they will also expel us from here, that we don’t even have enough to eat”.
Advised by a lawyer, they moved to Mexico City to find refuge, but they have no money at all. “We don’t think it’s fair, we are a group of working people, some university students… I wasn’t going to the United States to do anything bad, really,” he emphasizes.
