Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — She could be your daughter, your sister or your best friend.
Her favorite band is Queen. She smiles at the band’s famous lyrics “we will, we will rock you.” She’s read every Harry Potter book multiple times.
Amy, 16, left Honduras 10 days ago with her father.
She and her dad were transported by smugglers via bus and car to Ciudad Juarez. She and her dad walked into El Paso. She said they surrendered to US Border Patrol officers. There, they asked for asylum.
The two were deported back to Mexico where they will await a hearing in the US as guests of the Case del Migrante not far from the Independence Bridge linking this dusty town to El Paso. It could take weeks or months to learn of their status.
Now they await their future, which at best promises to be 1 percent successful in gaining US asylum.
Amy and her dad left her mom and 9-year-old brother behind, because she said they were both not strong enough to attempt the journey. Her goal, to get to the US with her father and gain her mother and brother’s freedom from Honduras. She said they do have relatives and friends living in New York and North Carolina.
On a dusty and scorching hot Tuesday morning, Amy sits in the Casa del Migrante office with JSurge founder Rabbi Steven Bayar, journalist Phil Jacobs and Dr. Eva Moya, a University of Texas El Paso professor of social work, who has brought a trunk load of Teddy Bears and clothing to the center on behalf of JSurge and the Good People Fund. Dr. Moya interprets during the interview.
Amy tells JSurge she is “doing well.”
She said she speaks a little English, but she doesn’t offer up any during our discussion.
“I’m looking for a better life. My country has an economic crisis. I want a better future and to attend better schools.”
She wants to work in women’s medicine as an OB-GYN.
“My father and I are the ones traveling.” Her voice is soft, but strong. Sometimes on the verge of tearing up.
“I left my mother and my brother. “My brother is only 9. There was no way we could expose them to this travel. But we want to one day be reunited as a family. Our plan is to come back together.”
It’s been 11 days since her family has been separated. She is here in Juarez with her father, who she said was in “commerce.” They had to leave because they worried about threats to his life. She said he didn’t want to pay any longer the fee imposed by gangs such as MS-13. And she said that the violence against women in her country was a constant threat.
Indeed, just blocks from where we speak, a black cross is painted on a pink background on a utility pole. They are all over Juarez and they mark yet another woman killed by gangs. It is called femicide and it is rampant in Mexico and Central America.
This is what hangs over Amy’s head like a dark cloud. Because she knows that children younger than herself have been sexually assaulted.
Smugglers used busses and cars to get them to Juarez.
“There are always risks of being a girl, of being a student tin high school. I am very scared, because my destiny is uncertain. There were multiple threats and assaults along the way,” she said. This is when the voice got even softer and her tears punctuated the rest of the conversation.
‘I’m going to wake up one day and this will be different,” she says in almost a plea.
Amy then uses a Spanish word that even our incredible interpreter translates as…
“Deep pain.”
“We just don’t know what’s going to happen to us,” said Amy.
She says “I live in fear. My father is my only protection. I’m young, I know I can be subject to rape, to assault. There is no protection for women. It’s very tough.
“But so am I. I have to be for my brother and my mother. I have to be.”
In the meantime, a bus sits on the same block as the migrant center.
It will soon return many Casa del Migrante “guests” south to Central America. They weren’t part of the 1 percent.
Amy says she knows that.
The 1 percent of hope is better than what she left behind.
Next:
The Teddy Bear Mission to Casa del Migrante
Click on a photo in the gallery to view a larger size.
Photo by Phil Jacobs
Photo by Phil Jacobs
Photo by Phil Jacobs
