Keysi Rosales Maldonado, a 20-year-old from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, was among the first group of immigrants who arrived around 5 a.m. Nov. 16 at the La Plaza at Brownsville Terminal bus station.
Rosales left her home country due to the economic crisis and violence.
“In hospitals, there is no medicine,” she said in Spanish. “Nobody is teaching in schools anymore. Kids don’t go to school anymore, like before when there were school desks. Now there are none. One has to take classes on the dirt.”
The young immigrant explained that all of her family decided to migrate to the U.S. when they were threatened to be murdered by the 18th Street gang.
Rosales happens to have lupus, which is one of the reasons all her family is now living in Memphis, Tenn., where the cold weather alleviates her condition.
Rosales crossed the Rio Grande with members of her family on Sept. 30 and was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol. She was detained for two months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center before being released.
Asked what was the worst thing about being in a detention center, she replied, “The most difficult thing is not knowing about your family. Not being able to communicate with them and also, that people from immigration, the officials, don’t let you talk to them at all or anything, even though they are close. Not even look at them. That is the worst I went through there.”
For the last four months, ICE has been dropping off people from several detention centers at the bus station in the early morning, according to Jack White, the executive director of the Good Neighbor Settlement House and a UTRGV social work lecturer. These immigrants are seeking asylum and have been allowed to temporarily stay in the U.S. while their asylum cases are resolved.
The immigrants come from three ICE detention centers: the East Hidalgo Detention Center in La Villa, Willacy County Regional Detention Facility in Raymondville and Port Isabel Processing Center in Port Isabel.
The Good Neighbor is a nonprofit agency at 1254 E. Tyler St. in Brownsville that helps the homeless with basic needs such as warm food, showers and a place to sleep. For the last three months, the agency also has been collaborating with other volunteer organizations to provide aid to immigrants who are being released at the bus station, located at in 755 International Blvd. in downtown Brownsville.
Immigrants who are dropped off at the station come from Central American and African countries, as well as Cuba, Russia, China, Bangladesh, India and Brazil.
In an interview with The Rider, White said immigrants are usually dropped off at the Brownsville terminal with limited resources.
“We meet them at the bus station, determine what their transportation plans are, help them understand those in relationship to where do you get off the bus or where you change buses,” he said.
White said the settlement house has been providing immigrants with aid to facilitate their journey to different states of the U.S.
“We provide them with some snacks ’cause some of them will be on the bus for four days or so,” White said. “… Often, we’ll allow them to use our phones to call their family members because many of them haven’t been in touch with their family for quite some time.”
Virginia White, a volunteer at the Good Neighbor, said the volunteers from the shelter give immigrants donated backpacks, note pads, pens and even a Spanish New Testament.
“It gives them a lot of dignity back,” Virginia White said. “We also pack them personal hygiene kits for their travels: toothpaste, shampoo, stuff like that.”
In her experience, the immigrants have been “very humble.”
“They’re very thankful for everything everyone has done for them,” Virginia White said.
Most of the immigrants often travel to the Southeast and Northeast regions of the U.S. to meet with family members.
The Good Neighbor also allows the immigrants to stay in its shelter before they depart to their destinations.
Jack White said immigrants rarely spend more than one night since their bus or airfare is good only for 24 or 36 hours after they are dropped off.
“When they are dropped off, they have no belts, they have no shoelaces,” White said. “Most of them have a bus ticket or airplane ticket, but they are totally unaware of where they are in relationship to the rest of the country and how they’re going to get there.”
Initially, ICE started dropping off immigrants around 10 p.m., an hour before the terminal closes. Therefore, immigrants had to stay in the streets overnight, Jack White said.
However, after the Good Neighbor appealed to the Brownsville Police Department, ICE started to drop off the immigrants at 5 a.m. After a few days, immigrants were being dropped off by ICE at random times in the morning.
“Most recently, that schedule has become less dependable,” White said. “So, ICE continues to drop people off but at random times that we can’t anticipate. Fortunately, we’ve got relations with people at the bus station who alert us when there are people that need our services.”
The groups of volunteers come from the Good Neighbor, Angry Tias and Abuelas and Tucker’s Kitchen.
Tucker’s Kitchen cooks food and the volunteers take it to the asylum seekers who are on the Gateway International and B&M bridges in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, waiting to be taken in by ICE.
White also explained that there is significant student involvement in the Good Neighbor. Some of the students who volunteer come from UTRGV and Texas Southmost College.
Among them is Alexandra Guzman, a social work senior at UTRGV.
“It’s just very humbling to see these individuals,” Guzman said. “They’re just very grateful just to be given a blanket. They would tell you their stories that they’re going through, the good and the bad, mostly bad but how they’re so grateful to just be here and grateful for us receiving them. A lot of stories are very heartbreaking, but it just humbles you and makes you more grateful for what you have.”
On Nov. 16, volunteers arrived around 6 a.m. and aided a group of six women and teenage girls, who had been dropped off about 5 a.m. Most of them had no idea where they were and said ICE agents did not provide them with any instructions after being dropped off at the bus station.
After several minutes, the volunteers provided the immigrants with clothes, blankets, backpacks, breakfast tacos and coffee, which the immigrants received hesitantly.
About an hour later, another group of immigrants who stayed overnight at the Good Neighbor arrived at the terminal to board their buses or to be taken to the Brownsville/South Padre Island International Airport.
Sergio Córdova, one of the volunteers at the terminal, told The Rider that the groups released at the bus station are usually composed of about 10 immigrants, but one time they received a group of about 63 people.
Although most of the immigrants declined The Rider’s interview requests at La Plaza, Daimaris Rodríguez Díaz, a 30-year-old pregnant Cuban immigrant, agreed to speak.
Rodríguez said it took her and her husband five months to cross 11 South and Central American countries before arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The five-months-pregnant woman, who earned a black belt in judo, and her husband had to wait for one month on the Matamoros side of the Gateway International Bridge before being allowed to enter the U.S.
“In reality, this is a dream,” Rodríguez said in Spanish. “It is a dream come true. … Now I have to look forward, con ganas, to be able to help my girls and my mom, whom I left over there in Cuba.”
She is unaware of her husband’s whereabouts because they were separated after their apprehension.
Immigrants from Cuba come to the U.S. not because they are pursuing the American Dream, but because they are escaping the situation their country is in, Rodríguez said.
“We need help,” she said, holding back tears. “Help, since our country doesn’t listen to us and treats us like if we were dogs. We don’t have rights, we have no freedom of speech. They violate human rights.”
Asked how she would describe her experience, she replied, “That is not an experience. That is called torture. I don’t even want to remember. We went through the Darién Gap … the jungle of Colombia, and we were lost for several days without food and it is pitiful because there, you find dead bodies, children drowning. … That affected me. In fact, I don’t know how I still remember, because I can’t sleep well.”
Jack White said his biggest concern is how the federal government will respond to the immigrants from the caravans that are trying to reach the U.S.
“My biggest concern is that whoever comes here is treated with dignity and respect, that if they need to go through a process to determine that they have a right to be fearful of their lives, that they get a chance to do that,” he said. “And, if they have family members here in the states, that they’d be allowed to join them.”
Alejandro Lázaro González Pérez, 24 and also from Cuba, said he was in ICE detention for 37 days.
González said immigrants should not be demonized because the real problems are more complex than what people think.
“For many, getting here is a very difficult experience,” he said in Spanish. “This was not the case for me since I didn’t have to travel for so long, but others travel months through the jungle. Some even lose their lives trying to get here, not only to improve their economic status, but just to get out of their countries that face deplorable political, social conditions.”
González reached the U.S. by getting a visa to enter Mexico and then coming to the border to ask for asylum. He said he has been treated with respect since his arrival to the country.
“They have treated me very well in this country, during the little time I’ve been here,” González said. “Human rights are respected. … And, well … so far, it has been a very good experience despite being an immigrant.”
Asked why he emigrated from Havana, Cuba, he replied, “In Cuba, the government oppresses us for thinking differently. Therefore, they torture us sometimes. … That’s why many Cubans had to leave the country. And, well, this is the country that protects us the most in that sense.”
González plans to continue his education in international law after he settles in Miami, where all his family is living.
Para la versión en español de este artículo, oprima aquí.
Daimaris Rodríguez Díaz, a pregnant 30-year-old Cuban immigrant, crossed 11 South and Central American countries with her husband before arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. The couple was allowed entry into the U.S., but was separated. She does not know her husband’s location.
