Dear Mr President-elect,
I am writing to you as a migration researcher and the coordinator of the Casa del Migrante (Migrant's House) in Tijuana, which provides assistance mainly to men who have been deported to Mexico from the United States.
I am also writing to you as the descendant of Chinese migrants, born in Tijuana, at the southern border of your country, where I have witnessed the impact of US migration policies first-hand while I was growing up.
The US has deported more than two million immigrants between 2010 and 2015. This represents more than twice the population of San Francisco. But, we also need to understand that we are talking about actual people and lives.
In recent years, the Mexican government has taken several steps affecting migrants trying to enter the US, such as introducing checkpoints within Mexico, and raising the speed of some freight trains on which Mexicans and Central Americans travel towards the "American dream".
I will tell you why this matters.
When I worked at the border between Guatemala and Mexico, I met Sandra, a woman from Honduras who was travelling towards the US with her 16-year-old daughter. Sandra was running away from the Mara Salvatrucha gang, one of Latin America's most powerful street gangs, which was trying to recruit her child by force.
As they tried to board one of these freight trains, Sandra's daughter managed to get on the train, but Sandra fell on to the rail tracks because of the train's high speed, and lost her left leg in the accident. Sandra spent weeks in the hospital, away from her daughter, who could not get off the train and spent two months looking for her mother.
Why am I telling you this story?
Because raising the speed of freight trains from 10 km/h to 60 or 70 is one of the measures that have been indirectly supported through different US programmes and funding schemes.
Through the years, the control of migration to the US has started to take place from the south of Mexico itself. In real life, these policies result in broken families, mutilations, death, and suffering.
Unfortunately, cases like that of Sandra and her daughter are very common. Just enter any migrant shelter in the south, along one of the migration routes that crisscross Mexico, or go on the main square of a city like Tapachula, and you'll see migrants with makeshift leg prostheses made out of PVC tubes and sellotape. Read More.....
I am writing to you as a migration researcher and the coordinator of the Casa del Migrante (Migrant's House) in Tijuana, which provides assistance mainly to men who have been deported to Mexico from the United States.
I am also writing to you as the descendant of Chinese migrants, born in Tijuana, at the southern border of your country, where I have witnessed the impact of US migration policies first-hand while I was growing up.
The US has deported more than two million immigrants between 2010 and 2015. This represents more than twice the population of San Francisco. But, we also need to understand that we are talking about actual people and lives.
In recent years, the Mexican government has taken several steps affecting migrants trying to enter the US, such as introducing checkpoints within Mexico, and raising the speed of some freight trains on which Mexicans and Central Americans travel towards the "American dream".
I will tell you why this matters.
When I worked at the border between Guatemala and Mexico, I met Sandra, a woman from Honduras who was travelling towards the US with her 16-year-old daughter. Sandra was running away from the Mara Salvatrucha gang, one of Latin America's most powerful street gangs, which was trying to recruit her child by force.
As they tried to board one of these freight trains, Sandra's daughter managed to get on the train, but Sandra fell on to the rail tracks because of the train's high speed, and lost her left leg in the accident. Sandra spent weeks in the hospital, away from her daughter, who could not get off the train and spent two months looking for her mother.
Why am I telling you this story?
Because raising the speed of freight trains from 10 km/h to 60 or 70 is one of the measures that have been indirectly supported through different US programmes and funding schemes.
Through the years, the control of migration to the US has started to take place from the south of Mexico itself. In real life, these policies result in broken families, mutilations, death, and suffering.
Unfortunately, cases like that of Sandra and her daughter are very common. Just enter any migrant shelter in the south, along one of the migration routes that crisscross Mexico, or go on the main square of a city like Tapachula, and you'll see migrants with makeshift leg prostheses made out of PVC tubes and sellotape. Read More.....
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