Hundreds of Venezuelans expelled to Juà¡rez with orders to leave Mexico
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- 17 Oct 2022
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María de los Ángeles Croce awoke to another day of terrifying uncertainty after sleeping outside a migrant aid agency office in view of the U.S. border fence, after U.S. Border Patrol expelled her and nearly 500 other Venezuelan migrants.
Dozens of Venezuelans milled about asking questions without answers on Saturday morning. Where would they sleep, eat? What would they do next? Upon expulsion, Mexican authorities required the 25-year-old and others to sign a document advising they would leave the country within 15 days "by their own means," she said. But how? And where could she possibly go?
What she experienced on the six-week journey over land from South America could fill the darkest chapters of a García Marquez novel. Turned back to Mexico, she collapsed unconscious at the foot of the international bridge, unable to breathe, overwhelmed, she said, by the failure of her endeavor.
"I kept going, and I had to do many things that I don't want to talk about now to make it through, always with so much fear, to eat or to pay someone to take care of me," she said. "I didn't know what I was capable of."
Gulping back tears, she continued, "But I feel proud of myself because I made it here — a step away."
De los Ángeles Croce and others lined up for a cup of hot coffee. Baptist missionaries, originally from Venezuela, brought a tall, silver pot to the corner outside the Chihuahua state Center for Migrant Attention. It's a lonely space where the railroad tracks bend west to cross the U.S. border, and the concrete banks of the Rio Grande canal are littered with the detritus of migration. The razor wire-topped U.S. border fence blocks the view of El Paso. Read More…
