How US Foreign Policy Created an Immigrant Refugee Crisis on Its Own Southern Border
Source: The Nation
The most important single object that Esperanza Ramirez and her 3-year-old daughter brought with them on their thirteen-day, 1,200-mile exodus through Mexico was a tiny piece of paper with the telephone number of Esperanza’s sister on Long Island. She folded the paper to make it even smaller, and hid it among the few things they carried. Criminal drug gangs along the Gulf of Mexico have gone into a lucrative side business: kidnapping Central Americans from the stream of refugees fleeing north, and forcing them to call their relatives in the United States to wire ransom money. “I knew that you can’t let them find out that you have contacts up here,” she said as her exhausted little girl, Angelica, slept in her lap. “It’s better if they think you are poor and alone.”