SPECIAL REPORT: Immigration through their eyes
MEXICALI, B.C. (KYMA, KECY) - Most of the time we focus on immigration through adults but children migrants also have a story to tell.
Abraham Retana spoke to minors in Mexicali to learn about immigration through their eyes.
"With the support of God, we have arrived here. We surrounded, we suffered," said Yadira Garcia, a Honduran migrant.
"We starved, we spent a lot of time, we were exhausted, it was a sad experience," said Angelo Escobar, a Honduran migrant.
"It is difficult it is very difficult because we left everything, we left our family behind," said Reyna Pineda, a Honduran migrant.
Through their look, we can see their pain, their uncertainty, and at the same time their innocence.
Migrant children can sometimes be the main victims affected by the poverty and violence that leads their parents to undertake a path that for many there is no way back.
"Leaving my dad, my dad who gave me the love, he gave me all the love in the world, and saying goodbye to him and never seeing him again is something very sad that I hold in my heart that I don't know how to explain it," said Escobar.
"After something bad something better comes. From here on I want good things for my mother, for my brother," said Garcia.
Border Patrol reported a flow of more than two million migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in Fiscal Year 2022.
Of that, nearly 24,000 children traveling alone.
Most of them were from Central American countries, minors who suffer the consequences of the violence they experienced back in their countries.
"Everyone has problems there because of the Maras," said Pineda.
"They come in a very bad condition psychologically, those who are from Michocán, Guerrero, from our Mexican Republic where all the drug cartels are making all their disaster-related with violence," said Altagracia Tamayo from the Covina Shelter.
To see immigration through the eyes of children is to be able to see that in their silence, they have also suffered.
But through it all, hope.
After having left behind their memories, their homes, and their families.
"That I love her and hope that God allows me to fulfill my dream to support my biological mother and hope she waits for me because I want to give her a better health. Is that your dream? Yeah," said Garcia.
Minors who are waiting in shelters in Mexicali hope to fulfill their hopes on the other side of the border and thus realize their American dream to have a better future with their families.
