YALAMBOJOCH, Guatemala (Reuters) ā Between heavy sobs, Catarina Alonzo explained that when her husband left Guatemala to try to reach the United States, they hoped taking their 8-year-old son would make it easier for the pair to get in. Instead, the boy fell ill and died.
Detained on the U.S. border, Felipe Gomez Alonzo died late on Christmas Eve in a New Mexico hospital a few weeks after setting off with his father, becoming the second Guatemalan child to die this month while in U.S. custody.
The two deaths have led to increased criticism of the Trump administrationās hardline stance on illegal immigration, as well as fresh scrutiny of why some migrants from Central America travel with children on the long, dangerous road north.
Speaking at her home in a mountainous region of western Guatemala, Catarina Alonzo said neighbors had told the family that taking a child would provide her husband with a way in.
āLots of them have gone with children and managed to cross, even if theyāre held for a month or two. But they always manage to get across easily,ā she told Reuters in an interview.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has yet to give an official cause of death for the boy, prompting Democratic lawmakers to intensify calls for an investigation.
The Department of Homeland Security, which says that Felipe Gomez Alonzo and 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, who died on Dec. 8, were the first children to die in CBP custody in a decade, this week said it would step up medical checks of migrant children to try to prevent any more deaths.
Alonzo, an indigenous Maya and native speaker of Chuj, has little Spanish and communicated through a translator. Wearing a sweatshirt and a purple dress, she spoke outside her hut in Yalambojoch, a village of about 1,000 people near the Mexican border.
She related how her son and his father, Agustin, an agricultural worker, had left in early December to find work in the United States to pay off debts. The two also hoped the boy would get a better education in the United States, she said.
Still, Alonzo said her husband had doubts and at one point decided he did not want to take the boy. But that upset the boy, so they resolved he should go.
Alonzoās sobs could be heard for minutes outside the house before she came out to be interviewed. Afterwards she went back inside to a tiny altar she had adorned with three photos of the boy that a local school teacher had printed out for her.
The altar stood to one side of a room with cement walls that serves as a bedroom and living area for Alonzo and her three surviving children. Adjoining it was a kitchen with a dirt floor and wooden walls.
Her husband remains in U.S. custody.
āNOW OR NEVERā
Marta Larra, a spokeswoman for Guatemalaās Foreign Ministry, said smugglers known as ācoyotesā often encourage migrants to take children as a form of āvisa.ā Many coyotes, she noted, are trusted by migrant families, so their word carries weight.
But Lucas Perez, the mayor of Yalambojoch, said some coyotes are only interested in ripping off people. Still, for many migrants trying to cross the U.S. border, taking a child along was the āonly option,ā he told Reuters.
Describing migration from the area as āconstant,ā Perez estimated about 200 people from the tiny village live in the United States.
Agustin Gomez, the boyās father, has two brothers in the United States he hoped to meet, his wife said.
Offline is a documentary on the inevitability of the Earth being slammed by a mega solar flare – not the common type that interrupts communications and creates a light show in the Northern skies – but the big brothers thousands of times more powerful. These monsters deliver enough energy to blow apart the master transformers that supply the planetās energy grids. When that happens, the lights go out for longer than anyone wants to think about. These X-Class solar storms hit the Earth every 150 years, on average. The last one arrived 156 years ago. We are overdue (
I guess it’s time to remind the readers that back in the day — in the post WW1 days many people scrimped and saved to try to get a way to immigrate LEGALLY to the USA — land with streets paved in gold. In those countries that distrusted their own currency, they stashed their savings away in deutsch marks and when the germans suffered hyperinflation, all their dreams of immigrating went up in a blink of an eye, and suicides were frequent among the tragically disappointed. That’s life when you favor a losing bet with all your eggs in one… Read more »
I feel bad that two children have died, but nobody in this country asked them to come here, and the fact that the parents brought children does not obligate the United States to accept them. Nobody can assure anyone that those children would have lived if they had been allowed into the country. People die in hospitals all the time. They most likely would not have died, had they stayed home, as the trip itself was a hardship on the child’s body, and exposed them to diseases of other travelers. Our immigration policies cannot be based on the immigrant’s needs.… Read more »