‘If they deport us, it’s a crime’: The Haitians who risked everything to give their families a chance
Emmanuel’s* dreams may seem humble, but they are not so different from those of millions of our planet’s inhabitants.
“To get a job to help my wife, my children. And to help my family back in Haiti,” he tells me, in a shelter in Mexico City. “We left in search of a better life for our families.”
Emmanuel has risked his life to pursue his dreams. He has crossed half a continent on foot and by bus. He has survived kidnapping, robbery and extortion. All so he could rebuild his life with his wife, son and daughter in a safe place.
Thousands of people like him have been forced to flee Haiti in recent years, due to extreme poverty and natural and humanitarian disasters that have left more than 4.4 million people facing crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity. They are also fleeing widespread violence in a country where the government has been implicated in crimes against humanity and where even President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July.
But when they arrive in Mexico or the US, the authorities of these countries often seek to deport them to Haiti. This is not an appropriate response to a grave human rights crisis. International law exists precisely for situations like this and states that no one should be returned to a place where their life would be at risk.
Emmanuel is 34 years old. He was studying mechanics but had to drop out of school because he could not afford to pay for his classes. He left Haiti in 2009 to search for better opportunities. Leaving his country was “very sad,” he says, “but if there’s no way for you to live then you have to leave.”
He took his family to Brazil, where his wife worked in the daytime while he looked after the kids. Then he went out to work at night, operating an industrial machine. Yet they still did not earn enough to support the family. Moreover, he says he suffered constant discrimination from Brazilians who called him a “damn Haitian” and stigmatised him because of his socioeconomic situation. So they decided to leave again, crossing 10 countries with the aim of reaching the United States.
In many countries, police or immigration authorities extorted money from them to let them pass. The worst incident happened in Veracruz, Mexico, where men without uniforms boarded their bus and demanded their documents. They grabbed Emmanuel and three other Haitian men, threw them into a car, blindfolded them and tied their hands and feet.
They then took them to a house, where they demanded $3,500 USD for each one of them to let them go. They beat them as they went through their belongings, says Emmanuel, and “started showing off lots of big guns”.
“We told them, ‘our families don’t have money to pay,’” says Josué, another of the kidnapped men. “And they said ‘if you don’t pay, you don’t get out of here. You have to pay. If you don’t, you’re staying here with no food or water, and we’re going to kill you.’”
The four Haitians spent nine days there, fearing for their lives, until their families managed to raise $2,000 for each of them. Upon receiving the ransom, their captors returned their mobile phones to them and released them on a highway.
Other Haitians in the shelter tell similar stories. Eddy, from Port-au-Prince, is 37 years old. He worked as a plumber for the American Red Cross in Haiti for five years but grew tired of the daily violence he faced in his country. “I’ve never been safe from violence when I’ve been there,” he tells me. “Never.”
Wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt, Eddy is lying on a mattress on the floor while the afternoon rain batters the windows. He says he saw terrible things during his trip, especially in the infamous Darien Gap, an almost inaccessible stretch of Panamanian jungle controlled by armed groups. He was robbed there and witnessed a mother and her 13-year-old daughter being abused.
“It’s hell,” he says. “I told God I’d rather die than go back there again.”
Upon arriving in Mexico, Eddy spent six days in an overcrowded immigration detention centre, alongside people he says were diagnosed with Covid-19. In addition, he says he was robbed again by three men with machetes and two with guns just after passing through customs in the state of Chiapas. They took all his belongings and when he begged them to return his passport, they beat him in the head.
Eddy estimates that he spent $3,000 to reach Mexico. But now, without identification, he cannot receive transfers. “That’s why I came [to the shelter]. I have family to help me pay for a hotel, but without documents I can’t receive money.”
Many people sold all their possessions in Haiti to finance their journey. Emmanuel says he sold all he had for the chance to give his family a better life. Now, after everything, he fears the authorities will send them back to a country where they have nothing.
“If we arrive here and they deport us, it’s a crime,” Emmanuel says. “You’re going to leave with great sadness, because you spent all your savings getting here, and you make it, and they deport you. And what are you going to live off there? You don’t have a house, where are you going to sleep? You don’t have food, what are you going to eat there? And how are you going to send your children to school?”
Nevertheless, the US authorities have returned more than 7,000 people to Haiti in recent weeks, despite acknowledging in May that the country was not a safe place to receive deportees. For its part, the Mexican government announced in September that it would provide refuge for more than 13,000 Haitians, but so far it has continued to deport hundreds more.
This is unacceptable. The authorities in both countries must guarantee the universal right to seek asylum and stop the deportations immediately. In addition, as the UN has stated, they must “offer protection mechanisms or other legal stay arrangements for more effective access to regular migration pathways”.
Instead of judging or stigmatising those fleeing Haiti, Emmanuel suggests that people in other countries consider what they would do if they were in their shoes.
“You would go to other countries in search of a new life,” he says. “Just like us.”
*Some people’s names have been changed to protect their identity.
This article was originally published by Newsweek en español
The perfect excuse: Mesoamerican authorities take advantage of COVID-19 to curb migration
Upon arrival in Amatillo, an unassuming town on the border between Honduras and El Salvador, several people quickly clustered around the cars. They offered all kinds of services – to guard the car, clean the windows, carry bags, exchange money, provide drugs, immigration forms, help us cross the river without immigration papers – and a new service: a negative PCR test for COVID-19. It’s the most convincing document on the illicit market. It has stamps, signatures and a coloured letterhead, with no need to put a swab up your nostrils. All at an affordable price and much cheaper than the actual test.
“This is the border,” one of the vendors said, “you can get whatever you need here”.
For years, people fleeing violence, repression, economic inequality and the effects of the climate crisis in Central America have faced terrifying obstacles in their way. They have risked extortion, kidnapping and sexual violence, among other dangers, in their attempts to reach a safe place where they can rebuild their lives. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, their journey is even more complicated. Not only must they avoid catching the virus, but they also have to deal with the prohibitive costs of testing, and extorsion by corrupt officials regardless of whether or not they have the tests, all while navigating complex terrain where governments are taking steps to deter migration.
PCR tests: a lucrative border business
A photojournalist working with the Inclusive Mobility in the Pandemic Alliance – a coalition of more than 30 civil society organizations in Mexico and Central America demanding protection for migrants in the context of the pandemic – approaches the border crossing in Amatillo by car. After filling in the exit form and getting her passport stamped, she drives onto the international bridge, leaving Honduras behind.
In the middle of the bridge over the Goascorán River that divides the two countries, a Salvadoran border official makes her get out of the car and asks if she has had a PCR test. “Yes,” the reporter replies and shows him the original certificate.
“This is useless,” he tells her and takes the document away to check it with one of the doctors in the immigration building. When he returns, he confirms that the test is effectively invalid, as it is not a “real-time PCR”, but an “antigen PCR”. Unable to pass, the photojournalist is forced to return to Honduras.
In the middle of the bridge, someone approaches and offers to solve the “problem” by providing her with one of those fake copies “with the original stamp” for US$70, nearly half the price of the real test. All this happens in front of the immigration authorities of both countries. None of them seem bothered.
One of the people working on the Amatillo border is called Pablo. “Here we work in whatever we can, helping people, tourists,” he said. Before the pandemic, Pablo earned enough money to support his family, but after the border closed for five months because of the COVID-19 outbreak he was forced to live on remittances from relatives living in the United States. That’s why he decided to diversify his business: “Before you just went through with your passport or ID, now you have to have your passport and a COVID test, and if you don’t have it, you can’t enter El Salvador or Honduras.”
Pablo and his colleagues “help” people who don’t have these documents. He explains: “there are some guys who deal with this paperwork, we don’t know where they get the documents, and the tourist can enter. They don’t test you, they just give you the document you want; it costs 20 or 30 dollars.”
Pablo says he provides tests for about six people a day. But it is only 8am and he has already “helped” three people, thanks to the immigration official who works in the office and regularly passes clients to him, in exchange for financial compensation. According to Pablo, approximately 20% of people crossing the border do not have the proper COVID-19 test.
Juan Manuel Martínez is the physician in charge of the El Buen Samaritano laboratory in the Honduran city of Choluteca. “The patients who come here are en route to El Salvador, as well as to Nicaragua and Guatemala. Lots of people travel for work and a smaller number to visit relatives who they haven’t seen for many months because of COVID,” he says. “With the test results that we give them, people who have returned from both the Guasave and Amatillo crossings and come here to be tested have no problem crossing the border.”
According to Martínez, El Buen Samaritano charges half of what most laboratories in Honduras do: “We’re concerned about the wallets of those who are going to travel and those who want to know whether they have the virus or not.” He says he knows nothing about people at the border offering fake PCR test certificates. “I hope the authorities are getting a handle on this because it’s not right, deceiving people and risking having someone who is positive entering the country and spreading the infection.”
The cost of a PCR test in Honduras ranges from US$125 to US$145, depending on the type of test. This is equivalent to approximately the minimum wage for one or two weeks of labor in the country. Hardly anyone who migrates can afford a PCR test to cross the border legally, and much less if they travel with their family.
The pandemic as a tool to curtail immigration
Between 1998 and 2017, Honduras was the second country in the world most affected by extreme weather events, according to the Global Climate Risk Index 2019. This trend continues to plague the country. In November, in the midst of the pandemic, Honduras was devastated by two consecutive tropical storms: Eta and Iota. According to a report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, storms damaged 62,000 homes, affecting more than 4 million people and leaving 92,000 people living in shelters. Following the devastating economic impact of the pandemic and the estimated US$1,879 million damage caused by Eta and Iota, Honduras’ economy shrank by 10.5% in 2020.
By mid-January, more than 9,000 people, most of them affected by Eta and Iota, formed the first migrant caravan of 2021. They tried to cross Guatemala to reach Mexico and eventually the United States.
Guatemala is party to the Central America-4 Free Mobility Agreement, a treaty establishing free movement for Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals, with only their ID and without the need for a passport or visa. Yet Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei has stigmatized migrants who try to enter the country, declaring last October that “these people who are breaking the law will be blocked from entering, especially because they are using unaccompanied children, they are using women and the elderly as human shields, and they are putting us Guatemalans at risk”.
In response to this situation, Father Mauro Verezeletti, director of the Casa del Migrante in Guatemala City, laments that “more and more countries” are blocking the passage of migrants and refugees. “They are turning their policies towards racism, xenophobia and discrimination against migrants.”
The caravan that left Honduras did not get beyond Chiquimula, a small town in southeastern Guatemala. There, on 17 and 18 January, the Guatemalan army and police detained several people and used batons and tear gas against members of the caravan. Many people were returned to the border and the caravan dispersed. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the excessive use of force by the Guatemalan police and army during these operations. It also urged states in the region to “take measures to address the structural problems that trigger displacement and to coordinate their efforts to effectively protect the human rights of individuals in the caravan (particularly their rights to health and personal integrity, to seek and obtain asylum, and to non-refoulement).”
In Mexico, the authorities have also taken measures to restrict migration. In October, the National Migration Institute (INM) warned that foreign nationals who enter without complying with the health protection measures to avoid the spread of COVID-19 could face up to 10 years in prison. Then, in March 2021, the government announced the installation of new checkpoints on the border with Guatemala, equipped with drones and night vision devices, and a ban on land crossings for non-essential purposes for at least 30 days. It also authorized the use of force to disperse unauthorized groups, such as caravans. The day after the announcement, hundreds of members of the National Guard and the INM marched through the streets of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of the southern state of Chiapas, in an unusual and symbolic parade.
The Mexican government has denied any link between the measures against COVID-19 on its southern border and immigration operations, but both came together following reports of increased migration from Central America and pressure from the US government to clamp down on it. Moreover, the Security Report presented by the Mexican government on 22 March revealed that, since 19 February 2021, it had deployed 8,715 military personnel assigned to the “Development and Migration Plan” at its borders – more than the number of personnel assigned to any other activity, including security operations, the eradication of illicit crops and the fight against the illicit fuel market.
On 29 March, a Mexican soldier shot and killed a Guatemalan man at the border, highlighting the dangers of entrusting public security and immigration enforcement to the military. The army admitted that it had been “an erroneous reaction on the part of the soldier, because there was no aggression” against him.
Days later, on 12 April, the Joe Biden administration announced that it had reached a deal with Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras for all three countries to deploy troops to their respective frontiers “to make it more difficult to make the journey, and make crossing the borders more difficult”.
Fleeing during the coronavirus pandemic
When Luis Pineda left Nicaragua, he never thought about taking a PCR test in order to cross the border. Like many people in need of protection, he packed his ID, some money, clothes and a toothbrush in a backpack and set off.
Pineda says he was a truck driver in Nicaragua, so he had friends who were drivers and he asked them to take him to the border between Guatemala and Mexico. As he had not had his passport stamped when he left Nicaragua and had not taken a PCR test, he was forced to hire the services of a guide to cross the border between El Salvador and Guatemala, where a truck driver friend was waiting for him.
He was walking across the bridge when a border police official stopped him and asked for his documents and COVID-19 test result. Pineda told him: “I’ve had to flee Nicaragua and I couldn’t get a COVID test there, because that’s run by the government. As I’m politically persecuted, I can’t go to government clinics. That’s why I had to leave like this, with nothing.”
Pineda says the policeman suggested “sorting it out” to allow him to continue on his way and threatened to deport him. Seeing no alternative, he agreed to pay in order to continue his journey. “The official said: ‘There are seven of us here, I think about 250 is good’ and so I had to give them 250 dollars, because it was that or they would send me back,” Pineda says.
Rubén Figueroa, south-southeast coordinator of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement, affirms that corruption related to COVID-19 tests has become yet another factor pushing migrants from Central America to cross borders irregularly.
“These people are victims of corrupt authorities because they are migrants,” Figueroa says. “The COVID-19 health emergency has been turned into a weapon in the hands of authorities to repress, detain and deport migrants, and for corrupt officials, who have always been there, to extort and smuggle migrants. The pandemic is another opportunity to increase the ‘fee’ they demand from migrants using threats in return for letting them continue their journey.”
In Pineda’s case, once he had paid the agents, he crossed the bridge, following their instructions, and arrived in Guatemala. He went to the parking lot and had a snack while waiting for his friend to get his passport stamped. “When the immigration officials arrived and saw me eating, they started asking me what truck I was driving, and I told them that I was being politically persecuted. They still asked me for my passport stamp and COVID test,” Pineda says. “But hey, there they were a little more conscientious and only took 150 dollars from me, for a soda to quench their thirst.”
I cowrote this feature with the photojournalist Encarni Pindado. It was published in the May 2021 edition of Newsweek México
Human rights are the medicine Mexico needs to heal itself
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the deep inequality that has long existed in Mexico. Decades of violence, corruption, impunity, structural discrimination and economic inequality have submerged the nation in a human rights crisis, now compounded by a grave health emergency.
The state has the obligation to protect and guarantee the rights of everyone in Mexico, without discrimination. It must urgently strengthen the precarious and underfunded public health system, and ensure adequate safeguards with respect to social security and employment. But beyond this, the government has an opportunity to make the radical changes needed to transform society and stop trampling on the most marginalised groups of the population.
The pandemic affects all of us, but it does not affect us all in the same ways. The Mexican authorities must listen to those whose voices have historically been silenced or ignored, such as indigenous peoples, women, LGBTIQ+ people, people living in poverty, and migrants and refugees.
They must treat people with compassion and empathy, rather than abandoning, stigmatising, or re-victimising those who need state support. They must also protect the journalists and human rights defenders who risk their lives fighting for a better tomorrow, instead of further endangering them. Human rights are the medicine that Mexico needs to heal itself.
This article was published in Spanish by La Lista, as part of a series of 22 recommendations by different figures on how to heal the nation
The Tequila Files 