HONDURAN TEEN FLED GANGS AT HOME ONLY TO BE MURDERED WHILE STRANDED AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

HONDURAN TEEN FLED GANGS AT HOME ONLY TO BE MURDERED WHILE STRANDED AT THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER
Julia Gavarrete, Heather Gies
February 23 2019, 8:00 a.m.

SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD JORGE ALEXANDER RUIZ took off alone in the middle of the night from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to escape pressure to join a gang. Sitting outside the shelter for unaccompanied minors where he was staying in Tijuana, in early December, waiting for a chance to request asylum at the U.S. port of entry, he recalled the menacing words that drove him to catch a 1:30 a.m. bus to Guatemala. “‘You’re going to work for us for free,’” a gang member threatened him. “‘Or you want to die? Choose one of the two.’”

Jorge grew up in a neighborhood that has long served as a drug dealing hub. The barrio splashed local headlines a few years ago as one of the most crime-ridden areas in Honduras’s second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, though family members say violence has calmed down since then. Jorge described daily life there as a “strange” existence, confined by territorial lines where the local clique butts against rival turf. “A lot of people don’t have work,” he told us. “Many don’t go very far, because if you pass the boundary …”

A friend he met in Mexico, a 17-year-old asylum-seeker from a town outside San Pedro Sula, jumped in to finish Jorge’s thought. “We can’t go just anywhere, for fear of getting killed,” he blurted out.

Some 2,700 miles from home, Jorge was optimistic about his asylum case and relieved to have left both the gang threats in Honduras and the dangers of the migrant trail behind him. A cough nagged him, a souvenir from his journey. He headed to Mexico weeks before the first big Central American caravan formed in Honduras last October.

More:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/23/unaccompanied-minor-migrants-us-border-policy/