Last Wednesday night at the Rescue Mission shelter in El Paso, Texas, one-year-old Merianny Medina was insistent that I help her color in the fairy tale princess outlined in black and white in her coloring book. “Pinta,” she insisted. “Color with me.”
Her mother Roinnielys and her grandmother Rithmary brought her to the United States in a treacherous and dangerous one-month journey in search of a better future.
The journey through the Darién gap was filled with fear and death. Rithmary says she still lives those moments through her nightmares.
They all left Venezuela with little more than the clothes on their backs. The journey through the Darién gap was filled with fear and death. Rithmary says she still lives those moments through her nightmares: the countless bodies they passed by through the jungles, and the horrific exploitation they experienced throughout Mexico.
Through Rithmary’s tears, I could feel the agony of being separated from her husband. When they got to the U.S. border, the family of four surrendered to U.S. authorities and requested asylum. The women were processed and allowed in. Her husband was put in detention and told he will be deported.
Rithmary decided she will accompany her husband back to Venezuela, and her daughter and granddaughter will stay and continue their journey to the American dream. The prospect of separation overwhelms them.
“God will give me the strength,” Rithmary told me. “At least, I know that my granddaughter will have a better future here. One day, one day we’ll be able to see each other again.”
“The idea was that we would all come together and fulfill our dreams,” Roinnielys tells me. “Our common dream.”
This latest humanitarian emergency at the border is just one more chapter in America’s long history as a beacon of hope and opportunity for people across the world. Much of the current crisis revolves around Venezuela, which has now experienced the second largest exodus of people in the world, after Syria. More than 7 million Venezuelans have been forced to leave their country in just the last eight years as a consequence of the Chavez-Maduro era. Meanwhile, Cuba has been under a dictatorship for 64 years. Haitians are facing the brutal realities of what is essentially a failed state. Nicaragua has been dominated by the Sandinistas since 1979. And across the world, the destruction of agricultural lands due to climate change continues to threaten millions of livelihoods.
In front of the Sacred Heart church in El Paso, we met the Quintero family from Venezuela. Five-year-old Aranza had just learned how to say “thank you,” in English. Her dad, Nestor, says Aranza wants to learn different languages so she can communicate with kids from different countries. Aranza’s brother, three-year-old Matias, wore a sweater that was given to him overnight because temperatures drop drastically when the sun goes down. The Quintero family crossed the border a few days ago. They gave themselves up to U.S. authorities and were released the night before. Now they want to make it to Chicago, and find work.
“We’re hoping our kids can study, and we want to buy a little house. We didn’t have a house in Venezuela,” mother Yannalis Lucena tells me. “What little we had, we sold to try to come to the United States.”
I asked them what their message was to the American people.
“I just want to tell the American people: We’re not coming to do bad things. We came here to create a better future for our children,” Lucena tells me. “We just want to work. We just want to do things right.”
This is an adapted excerpt from the May 11 episode of “José Díaz-Balart Reports.”
