Captivity, cruelty and uncertainty describe the journey from Ecuador to Harrisburg for Maria Lopez, her husband Joseph and their 13-year-old, disabled daughter Cathy*.
Sitting at her dining room table, in a sparsely furnished Harrisburg apartment, Lopez shared, through an interpreter, the story of their trek.
“The trip was unplanned,” she said. “We never thought we were going to come to the United States. We thought of going to Spain, and we wanted to go to a country close by to get some sort of permission to go to Spain.”
Plans changed, though, when a relative encouraged them to go to the United States instead, saying there was a chance of assistance here. They took the U.S. option, unaware of the perils ahead.
“Traveling through El Salvador was really rough,” Lopez said, recounting the most dangerous part of the trip.
In two different cars, their group of eight was under constant threat of kidnapping and rape both by human traffickers and by strangers they encountered along the way.
One of their group, a young woman in the second car, was kidnapped. Her friends back home managed to gather 2,000 pesos, about $100 U.S. dollars, for her release.
“We were going to be next if we didn’t get more money,” Lopez said.
At one point, cartel members, who smuggle and exploit migrants, became distracted when a large group of Cubans arrived on the road, and Lopez’s car, with its human cargo, made its getaway. This was but one of many harrowing experiences and quick escapes along the journey north.
In her Harrisburg home, Lopez remained composed as she spoke. Her calm demeanor, youthful appearance, and the dish filled with strawberry candies in front of her were the antithesis of the horrible, month-long experience.
Each leg of the journey required additional money, and they were held at that temporary location until it was paid.
“We were told we needed to pay $1,000 per person so that we can go to the next city,” she said. “We told them we didn’t have the money, and they asked about our daughter. They said, ‘You pay even if you have a baby in your stomach.’”
Each coyote, the people who smuggle immigrants across the border, work with specific cartels. So, as they paid up, they were safe from kidnapping for a while. Nonetheless, the family never felt far from danger.
Lopez described a situation when one man, high on drugs, began bargaining with another person for the women in the group.
“We didn’t sleep,” Lopez said. “There were eight of us protecting us from this.”
She added that, along the way, she had met girls who had been raped and had seen people who had been kidnapped, beaten, then photographed. The photos were used to extract ransom from their families.
At one point, they stayed at a large country house before beginning to travel on foot. Many coyotes dropped off their groups there.
“I thought they were going to ask for more money,” Lopez said. “I had applied for loans. My family had used everything. I had nothing, I had nothing. No money. I was the most desperate in this house.”
Caring for their daughter, born with “brain paralysis,” made the trip even more physically and emotionally exhausting. They traveled with a walker, which broke, so they purchased a wheelchair in Mexico. They carried Cathy when the terrain proved unmanageable for the wheelchair. Her father transported her across the Rio Grande.
“We were lucky it was low,” said Lopez, motioning to her waist as she described the river at the U.S.-Mexico border. Finally, the family had reached their destination: the United States.
State of Uncertainty
Coming to the United States illegally is not cheap, and it’s not safe, said John Leedock, executive director of Compass Immigration Legal Services in Harrisburg.
“There’s a whole industry based on smuggling,” he said. “These cartels, particularly in the U.S.-Mexican border, are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a week smuggling people.”
Compass assists migrants through the complicated process of sorting out their immigration status. Many, like Lopez, have a year after they enter the country to apply for asylum. Lopez owned a business in Ecuador and was under constant pressure from cartels extorting money from her.
In the United States, Lopez’s family filed the asylum application with the help of a bilingual friend. According to Leedock, while Lopez waits, she’s ineligible to work legally until she receives a work permit, which can take three to five months.
“Once you get that work permit…you can get any job you are qualified for,” he said. “It allows you to apply for a Social Security number, which is only good to pay federal tax. It doesn’t convey any other benefits.”
Unless they work illegally, asylum-seekers must depend upon the local community to assist them as they wait for their permit. The permit and application allow people to remain here legally and work, but nothing more.
“They’re not eligible for any state or federal benefits until they have their asylum application adjudicated and are approved,” Leedock said.
The exceptions are elementary through high school education and emergency medical treatment.
It takes three to five years for an asylum application to reach a judge, sometimes longer.
“I know people here in our community that have been waiting better than 10 years,” Leedock said. “These folks aren’t poor. They own their own business and restaurants. They are contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to our communities.”
They also live in a constant state of uncertainty because they could lose their case and be forced to leave the country.
Those who don’t meet asylum requirements remain in the U.S. with no hope of working legally, driving legally (undocumented people in Pennsylvania are not permitted to drive) or receiving government assistance. Without proper identification, they’re also disqualified from some assistance from nonprofit organizations that work with migrants.
The Lopez family’s life in Harrisburg is just beginning. After spending $7,500 to get here, she is grateful, especially “for getting to know nice people that were able to help.”
However, she also has worries.
“I fear not to be able to find a job or work and be able to pay my bills,” she said.
Lopez considers herself lucky that her family arrived physically safe. Asked if she would make the trip again, knowing what she knows now, she shook her head resolutely.
“No,” she said.
Despite the outcome, despite reaching the Harrisburg area safely, the journey north was too harrowing to endure again.
*Names were changed to protect interviewees’ identities.
For more information on Compass Immigration Legal Services, visit www.compassimmigrationlegal.org.
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