Think Creative - Issue 6

why migrants risk it all

After the Journey

By Jillian Slutzker Rocker

José  On most days, José finds odd jobs to do around Tijuana, Mexico—harvesting jícama, garden- ing, masonry, carpentry or painting.  “I plan to stay in Tijuana for a while because there is work. Here there is a lot of work,” he explains.  Although he only gets paid about $10 for a nine-hour day, José is content to be earning an income and to have cash to buy food. He wasn’t so lucky in his hometown of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.   “I didn’t have money for even one taco. I didn’t have anything to eat. I opened the refrigerator but there was nothing,” he remembers.  José was just one of many residents of Hondu- ras’ capital experiencing unemployment and poverty. Creative’s study found that 64 percent of the city’s households worry about having enough food for everyone in the family. One in four households in the city makes under $400 per month and cannot make ends meet.  “If there was work in Honduras, I’d be there. Believe me, I’m not the only one,” says José. José was previously deported from the U.S. to Honduras, but made his way back north to Tijuana, spending a part of the journey on The Beast train.

For many migrants, the challenges do not stop when they reach their destinations. Though they’ve fled crime and poverty, or in some cases reunited with loved ones, now they must learn to get by in a new place. Read the stories of Jessica, Juan Carlos and José to see what life can look like in the United States and at the northern Mexican border.

Juan Carlos and Jessica settled their family outside of Washington, D.C., while they go through the process of securing asylum. Still concerned about their safety after being threatened in El Salvador, the family preferred to keep their identities private.

Jessica and Juan Carlos 

Jessica and Juan Carlos are waiting anxiously for 2022, the year their asylum case will be heard in court. Until then, they are starting to put the pieces of their lives back together in the Washington, D.C., area and build a better future for their three children.  “My children feel happy in this country,” says Jessica, 36. “They do not want to return to El Salvador. My daughter is 15 years old. She already knows and understands.”  What Jessica means is that her daughter understands why the family left their home in SanMiguel, El Salvador. She understands that the gangs were threatening her father and, by extension, the whole family. She understands that if they return, the gangs will still be there.  Creative’s study found that 1 in 4 residents of SanMiguel has been robbed on the street. Thir- teen percent have had a relative or close friend murdered.  “The gangs issued a sentence and said that they were going to kill me and my whole fami- ly,” explains Jessica’s husband Juan Carlos, 46. “The problems were getting worse and worse. I had to sit down with my wife and tell her that we were going to leave.”  Jessica adds, “My children were not free, they could not go out to have fun or go to the park because we were thinking that something could happen to them and to us.”   The family of five hired a coyote, or smuggler,

who helped them board La Bestia, The Beast, a freight train that travels throughMexico. Migrants commonly climb atop the train’s cars or cling to the sides to carry them north, but it’s incredibly risky. Many people have been killed or severely injured after falling onto the rails. “We suffered a lot and got separated from the guides. It was very difficult for us to sleep in the streets,” says Jessica. “But I said to myself we just had to get here, to touch American soil, because we had proof of needing asylum.”  Today, Jessica has a work permit. Juan Carlos is also working. He says the labor is hard, but he has found one thing in the U.S. he could never get in El Salvador: security.  They miss their family members in El Salva- dor, and they are struggling to adjust to their new environment, to “start from scratch,” as Jessica says.   If the security situation improved and the gangs were no longer a threat, Jessica and Juan Carlos say they would eagerly return to El Salvador.   But for now, they wait for their asylum hearing, hopeful for the outcome, and they watch their children grow, learn English and thrive in their new home.  “I no longer worry that my children can get hurt. I think we are more secure here,” says Jessica.  

Caught between his native Honduras and the U.S., José is making a living in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico.

“People don’t want to leave their countries in search of employment, for a way to generate money, to raise your kids,” he adds.  For now, José bides his time in Tijuana, work- ing for low but consistent wages. He hopes to eventually make it to Los Angeles, where his two American-born daughters Britney and Catherine live. And he hopes to find a job in the U.S., where the pay is much better for the same work he is doing now in Tijuana. “People are migrating in search of a new future,” he says. n

Photos by Erick Gibson (top) and Lucas Williams

24 | Think Creative | Fall 2019