Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Washington (Agenzia Fides) – Veronica is 30 years old. She is from Puebla, Mexico and lives in New York with her husband. All day she works for a family living in Manhattan, where she earns 600 dollars a week. She takes care of the house and two children. Her own children have stayed in Mexico, one is 7 and the other 9. They live with Veronica’s sister in Mexico City.
“We have tried to bring them over various times and we wanted to pay their way in car using false documentation. It would have cost us more or less 5, 000 dollars per child, but we haven’t found anything that convinces us enough,” Veronica told Agenzia Fides. “I don’t want my children to cross the desert like I did and like my husband did, before me.”
In order to join her husband and find a better life for her and her children, Veronica crossed the desert three years ago, starting from the Mexican state of Sonora, in the city of Nogales, along with a group of 12 of her countrymen, and an expert guide. The passage of illegal immigrants normally occurs from Nogales (in the Mexican state of Sonora) to Nogales (Arizona). It is one of the largest and hottest deserts in North America: the Gila Desert, which takes up large areas of Arizona and California and is known for its large variety of animals, mainly reptiles, some of which are poisonous.
“In the desert, we has an expert guide that explained everything to us, including what we should do if we were caught by agents,” the woman said. “We could only walk by night, to avoid not only the heat but most of all, the aerial monitors and video cameras. There is a point where you have to duck a bit to go under a cable with a alarm sensor. It was dark and we were afraid. Someone set off the alarm by accident,” Veronica recalls. “The lights all went on and it was as if we were in broad daylight and the border police - the ‘migra’ - arrived.”
She remembers a night of fear, waiting, searches. In the end, they were all arrested and taken to the Commissary. “We told them our identification information and showed them our documents, as the guide had told us. We were not treated badly by the agents, and in the end, they made us sign a declaration saying that we would not try to enter the United States again,” the woman said.
The next morning, the entire group was left free on the other side of the border. “The guide had taken off as soon as the alarm had sounded, so as not to be arrested because as she was a legal immigrant, she was risking more than we were. But she kept her word and waited the whole night for us in Nogales, in the hotel that she had shown us the day before, and we met her there.”
“We all had the intention of trying to pass the following night, even though we had signed the statement, which frightened us a bit,” Veronica says. “But we had gotten so far, although the feeling of fear remained.” That same night, the left the hotel in Nogales to try once more, this time succeeding.
The entire trip cost 3,000 dollars, including the transportation from Amarillo (Texas) in a van, taking turns sitting down, driven by a US citizen, so as to reduce any suspicions. From there, they traveled to New York, the whole way by van.
But Veronica’s story does not end here. One year after her arrival, she wanted to return to Mexico to see her children. She had to go through the same process of crossing the desert to return to her job in New York. “That time it was terrible,” she told us. “It was a lot harder than the first time. The heat was unbearable and we walked with difficulty. I couldn’t feel my feet or my legs.” They went extremely slowly and the group had to hide out for an entire day in the desert, without food and with very little water. Due to the heat and the agents, Veronica recalls, “we couldn’t walk in broad daylight.”
“The second time, when we started walking, I thought I wouldn’t make it, even with all the will I had. In the end, I made it. But this time, if I return to Mexico, I am not coming back.” Veronica is no longer willing to run the risk again – neither for herself nor for her children. “They are too small. They wouldn’t withstand the climate and all the fear one feels there in the desert. That is why we have thought of finding false documentation for them and having them come by car. They told me of an American woman that could bring them, but the agents usually interrogate the children and ask them their names and concrete questions. If they made a mistake or they get nervous, we could lose it all.”
Unable to bring her children to New York, Veronica has decided to return to Mexico in June 2009, to stay. She hopes to have made enough money to buy a house in Mexico City. There is certainly no one who can pay for the four years she will have spent away from her children. “And yet,” she says, “I hope it will have been worth it.” (FM) (Agenzia Fides 18/9/2008)
