The Matthew at JCU Articles, Features

Beyond The Numbers: A Feature Story

During the Biden Administration, 5.4 million people have crossed the borders between Mexico and the United States. How many manage to cross the border and what pushes them to do so and risk their lives? Read a story of the journey.

Feature

By Francesca Rapisarda / Contributor | Edited by Lucie Ruggiero 

A big camera on my back, my notebook in my hands, my heart racing.  

Am I crossing a line? How do I make them feel comfortable when speaking to me? I keep wondering.

I read the questions over and over.  

Should I practice them in Spanish? I keep asking myself. My friend waves at me.  

“Are you ready?” He says.  

I nod my head.  

Crossing borders between Mexico and the United States takes courage. It is the deadliest route with 8,423 deaths since 2014. In the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, there has been an increase in sexual violence against migrants.  

We keep seeing media portraying migrants from Latin America pushing each other, screaming in fear of drowning, crying, sleeping in the streets, and trying to cross the frontiers across the Rio Grande or Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts. And yet, many still wonder why they do this. Is life “over there” that bad? I keep thinking that we must know what is really happening “over there”. It’s not just “numbers” that rise every day. These are individuals with struggles, hunger, worries, anxiety, emotions, thoughts, and faith. 

The key factors pushing so many people to leave their homes behind are many: unemployment, poverty, social exclusion, drug cartel threats, and gender violence. These are individuals whose families have been murdered, or who have lost their jobs to government corruption or climate change; many reasons force migrants to decide to attempt the dangerous journey. 

During my 2023 semester abroad at Adelphi University in New York, I decided to talk to migrants in the city. Hearing their stories immersed me in a reality that is often underestimated. I quickly learned that they had left their homes in hopes of creating a better future in the United States. 

I asked if any of them would be interested in sharing their story with me for a journalism project. Luzbeles, a woman who had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border through the Rio Grande when she was around 40 years old, was willing to share her story with me. It took her 10 days to reach Mexico after traveling long distances on two different buses. Once there, she got locked in a room by a Mexican drug cartel, where she waited another 10 days before attempting to cross. 

Luzbeles left Colombia because she was living in very poor economic conditions, and she wanted a better life both for herself and for an eventual future family. She could not accept her reality and knew she could make a difference and change her destiny.  

Her journey to cross the border from Mexico into the United States started long before reaching Mexico. The first step was to gather enough money to pay a drug cartel to “help” her cross the border. Human smuggling is a business that profits with costs of up to $10,000 US dollars to traffic migrants from Central America and $15,000 US dollars to more for people coming from Brazil or Ecuador. Cartels make around $13 billion US dollars a year smuggling migrants across the border, with many of those journeys turning deadly or resulting in exploitation.  

It is important to state that Coyotes and Cartels are different. The majority of coyotes in Mexico operate under the consent of cartels, who frequently control the routes.  

After a lifetime of trying to save money for the cartel and living a life in terrible economic conditions, Luzbeles forced herself to stay strong. She couldn’t take anything on the journey with her, because the drug cartels would have stolen it all, even her clothes. The only clothes she carried were the ones on her body. She said she felt embarrassed when her clothes began to tear due to the desert’s strong heat. She feared she would need to travel almost naked. In the brief moment when an area of the border was left clear by the U.S. border patrol, the cartels put her inside a large cardboard box, like the ones used for shipping, packed with as many people as possible for all of them to cross faster. She could barely breathe. Many of them didn’t make it.  

Luzbeles was not sure she would have made it either. 

I asked Luzbeles what made her “trust” the cartels, and she said that she never trusted them but was afraid of them, and what made it worse was that she knew that what she was doing was “illegal”.  

Luzbeles is just one of the many survivors of a smuggling business that violates human rights. She is the one who has to carry the shame of doing something “illegal” when, in reality, her only fault is being born in disadvantaged inhumane conditions and wanting a decent life.  

After waiting for the U.S. border patrol to leave or change turns so they would be fewer, it was finally time to cross the border across the Rio Grande, but Luzbeles didn’t know how to swim. The coyotes put her in an inflatable tied to a dog and made her sit in it while the dog swam across the river. 

Once she reached United States territory, she started breathing again in relief. It was a mixture of relief and fear. She did not know what her life would be like from that moment on. 

Her documents were fake, she had no family, friends, money, or clothes. A family hosted her for a couple of days before asking her to leave because they feared the American immigration forces would find out and take legal action. During that time, if neighbors saw something strange or illegal and reported it, they could have gotten money as a reward.  

But Luzbeles did not give up. She said she knew that life could get better.  

Many migrants go to New York once they cross the border safely. New York City is an option for many reasons, among those job options that don’t require documentation and, more particularly, an existing local law that orders the city council to provide a bed for every houseless person. This law came after advocates supporting individuals without homes filed a lawsuit in the late 1970s. The city since then has promised to provide homes for any person who requested it; this agreement was later extended to women and families with children.  

In the last two years, more than 150,000 people have reached the city. 

Luzbeles feared taking the flight to New York from Texas because many people are caught during check-in, but she made it.  

Luzbeles began her new life in New York by getting some odd jobs. She even went as far as cleaning several homes privately. She says she lives a happy life now, she managed to get her green card and often visits Colombia, not regretting anything.  

As a journalism student, Luzbeles’ story makes me think of the many people living in fear of being deported every single day. It also makes me think of those still waiting on the other side of the border, hoping to have a better life for themselves and their children. It makes me think of the fear they must have of not making it. My thoughts are with the ones who are trying to save money for the cartels to traffic them, forcing themselves to depend on people who won’t hesitate to abandon them and leave them in the wrong hands if something bad were to happen.  

Beyong the numbers are real lives.   

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