JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Like other merchants in his Guatemala City neighborhood, Luis Coronado initially dismissed monetary demands from a street gang targeting them.
Then a store owner, his son and an employee were murdered two doors down the street. Nobody got arrested.
The next time gang members came to demand more money than he made in a month, Coronado took his wife and children to relatives in a small town, and he set off to request asylum in the United States.
Along the way, he saw a travel companion fall off a cargo train and get torn to pieces; then criminals kidnapped and beat him in Mexico until they realized he had nothing but the clothes on his back.
“They made me suffer a lot,” the Guatemalan migrant said. “I don’t wish that on anyone.”
On Friday, he walked from a rented room in Juarez to Casa del Migrante for a diabetes screening and to talk to a psychologist about his ordeal.
“People on the move experience a lot of stress, they go through very painful situations along the way,” said the Rev. Francisco Bueno Guillen, director of Casa del Migrante. “It is important for us to make sure they find peace and their heart heals.”
The largest nonprofit shelter in Juarez on Friday partnered with local governments and international aid organizations to offer a health fair focusing on migrants.
Buses brought citizens of Central and South America from smaller shelters and neighborhoods throughout the city so they could participate. Health workers vaccinated children and paid special attention to mental health issues in adults.
Joifre Perales said he lives in a sort of limbo after he and his two nephews came to Juarez to wait for a Jan. 21 asylum interview appointment in El Paso, Texas, that got canceled on Jan. 20.
“I am trying to get this nightmare out of my mind — all of the things we went through while passing through seven countries,” the Venezuelan migrant told Border Report. “I have received help from the psychologists; I am making a little progress.”
Perales left Venezuela last year following presidential elections that international observers allege President Nicolas Maduro and his ruling party won amid widespread intimidation and irregularities.
He and his sister were campaign workers for Mesa de Unidad Democratica, the opposition parties’ coalition, and received numerous death threats.
“I cannot return to my country because I am politically persecuted. I cannot return because I will lose my life,” Perales said.
That persecution included masked men coming to his home to threaten him before the July 2024 election and demanding money after Maduro won. “I paid, but they continued to threaten me just the same. They posted (threats) online and on WhatsApp, they called me all the time. I hid, but they found out where I was. I had to leave the country.”
Add to that stress the fact he’s been separated from his sister, who entered the U.S. after her asylum interview while Joe Biden was still president, and that no one seems willing to hire him in Juarez.
Mexican employers require a work permit he cannot procure without documents he cannot go back and get in Venezuela. Perales said he needs all the mental and emotional support places like Casa del Migrante can give him.
Migration down, but need for help hasn’t waned
Rev. Bueno says migration is down to a trickle along the Mexican border with the United States. That is consistent with data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the past few months.
Casa del Migrante in the past three years often has hosted more than 400 migrants at a time. On Friday, it only had 20 guests.
But the Catholic priest said the organization continues to look after migrants still at shelters, those struggling to survive in Juarez’s informal economy and those being deported from the United States.
“Migration trends change, it’s not a constant; we have seen this over the years,” Bueno said. “Our mission does not change. […] We assist people in transit who have no other resource, whether they are many or are a few.”
Casa del Migrante has been in business 35 years.
Friday’s migrant health fair included health professionals from Doctors Without Borders and Ave Fenix, a Mexican substance abuse treatment service.
In coming to Juarez, the migrants are exposed to gang members who want them to buy drugs and to transnational criminal organizations seeking to recruit them to sell drugs.
“We are seeing a lot of people consuming crystal meth,” said Ave Fenix staff member Claudia Nunez. “They (the migrants) are vulnerable, they are being told ‘this will help you, this will give you energy.’ (Meth) is all over the city.”
Nunez said the lack of income and the difficulty migrants without documents have in getting jobs can tempt them to join drug gangs. “They start selling drugs out of need and then to consume them,” she said.
Coronado, the Guatemalan former business owner, said he understands why someone facing death threats would want to leave their country. But he urges others not to come for economic reasons because they might be disappointed.
“The way things are, it is very difficult” to enter the United States, he said. “And you are risking your life crossing Mexico. People cannot imagine what they will suffer. People should not believe when someone says the (U.S.) border is open. That is a lie. […] I am traumatized. I have nightmares because of everything I saw and everything that was done to me.”
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