With
$110 in his pocket and the U.S. border to the north, the teen was
approached by a man who offered to smuggle him across the Sonoran
desert. But after being led to a nearby house, he was surrounded by
guns, tied to a chair and told he would be killed unless his brother in
Louisville paid a ransom.
"I was very scared," Elivar recalled. "I didn't know what was waiting for me."
After a harrowing journey that would include abductions, beatings and nearly dying in the desert, today Elivar is a quiet ninth-grader in a Louisville school for new immigrants, awaiting another uncertain fate — this time in court. It's all part of the fallout from a child migrant crisis that, even as it has begun to wane, continues to reach into unlikely places far from the border.
According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, at least 95 unaccompanied child migrants, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, were released to relatives in Jefferson County, Ky., from January to September to await deportation hearings.
That's just a small portion of the more than 52,000 children who have flooded over the border this year, sparking a political uproar and straining immigration agencies and shelters. That flood slowed in September amid tougher enforcement in Mexico and U.S. efforts to dissuade migrants.
Now,
as the government works to speed up court proceedings and national
attention moves away from the issue, migrants such as Elivar remain in
limbo — making their cases to stay in the U.S. while grappling with
traumas from dangerous journeys.
"It's amazing what they've been through," said Gwen Snow, principal of Jefferson County's ESL Newcomer Academy, which since January has seen an influx of such students, including some who were raped or witnessed deaths. "These kids are really resilient, though."
The surge in unaccompanied child migrants is expected to reach 60,000 through 2014, compared with 8,000 in 2008, according to a congressional report.
Experts say it was rooted in a mix of factors, chief among them an increase in violent crime in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including extortion and killings by criminal syndicates and gangs, said Maureen Meyer, who studies migrant issues with the Washington Office for Latin America.
In
addition, some argue that Central Americans appeared to believe U.S.
treatment of minor immigrants had softened, and smugglers began
promoting the misconception that minors traveling alone who turned
themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol would be allowed to stay.
Elivar had heard similar stories in his impoverished village in the western highlands of Guatemala. He grew up as one of eight children in a family where the parents worked as intermittent laborers.
They lived without running water and often went hungry, he said, adding that he had to quit school in the fourth grade because his parents couldn't pay school fees. In recent years, he said, gangs had terrorized the area with extortion and violence.
"They would come into your home, for money," Elivar said.
In late May, armed gang members who knew he had relatives in the U.S. threatened to kill Elivar within two weeks if he didn't pay them. He knew two of his cousins had made it across the border, so he asked his uncle to lend him the equivalent of roughly $400 to leave the country.
"I told (my parents) if I stayed, they would not only harm me but probably them too," he said.
TAKEN FOR RANSOM
By early June, Elivar was traveling alone — crossing into Mexico to the city of Frontera Comalapa, where an aunt helped him buy a $110 bus ticket north. After long days of bouncing along Mexico's roads and highways, Elivar arrived in the town of Altar, Sonora, 60 miles south of the Arizona border.
He didn't have nearly enough to pay a smuggler, but he planned to ask his brother, Bulmaro Mazariegos, 23, to wire money from Louisville. He hoped to cross the desert and turn himself in to the border patrol, then make his way to Louisville.
Within an hour of arriving in Altar, criminals had relieved Elivar of his cash and beaten him and were demanding his brother's phone number to seek a ransom.
Far to the north, Bulmaro's cellphone rang while he was working in a farm field in Kentucky. He decided it would be fruitless to call the Mexican police and the next day wired $1,500 through a Western Union-like service.
After the money arrived, Elivar was driven for two hours with a hood over his head before being dropped in the desert. The car sped away. Without food, water or any idea where he was, Elivar began walking. All around him was arid, thorny brush. He wasn't sure which direction he was heading. For days, he said he ate fruits of prickly pear cactus to stave off dehydration.
"I would walk during the day and at night I would sleep," he said. "It was like a wilderness, there was nothing. I was very thirsty and hungry." At one point, Elivar said, he felt like he was "almost dying."
He finally stumbled into a small town.
Two Spanish-speaking men approached him and brandished weapons, and once again he found himself being held by a succession of captors. For days, Bulmaro responded to three demands of wire transfers totaling $3,500.
"I said, 'Don't worry, I'll do whatever they ask,' " Bulmaro reassured Elivar when speaking to him on his captors' phone.
In late June, Elivar and several other captives were placed in a car with hoods on. They drove until he heard the car pulling over and the engine shutting off. He heard an English-speaking voice, and his captors told him to pull off his hood. He saw they'd been stopped by a U.S. sheriff.
Unable to speak English, Elivar could not tell the officers that the men were captors. He said he doesn't know what became of them.
"We were grateful," he said. "They saved us."
TEARFUL REUNION IN LOUISVILLE
Transferred from immigration authorities to a Health and Human Services-contracted shelter full of young migrants near Phoenix, Elivar got food, water, clothing and medical care from a doctor who told him he was badly dehydrated and lucky to be alive.
In August, the U.S. government released Elivar to Bulmaro and put him on a commercial flight to Louisville, where he would await his legal proceedings. Arriving at Louisville's airport, he and his brother embraced, tears flowing down their faces.
"There are no words to describe it," Bulmaro said. "I didn't think I'd ever see him again."
Today Elivar lives under the care of Bulmaro in Louisville. Bulmaro, who works at a restaurant, is awaiting his own immigration proceedings.
Each day Elivar takes a school bus to Newcomer Academy. School officials said that they are working to find ways to increase staff and counseling services partly for children dealing with trauma from solo journeys.
"In my dreams, (my captors) still have me. They're still holding me. I haven't been able to get over it," said Elivar, who wants to become an attorney.
Rosie Bertles, one of his teachers, describes him as a quiet, serious, "very motivated student." She said he's rapidly improving despite his struggles from a lack of formal education. "He would make a great American citizen. If he can stay."
Elivar said he knows he might be sent back but is convinced that if he returns to his village he will be killed. He doesn't know where he would go, he said. Bulmaro said even without the threats, life back home holds little promise.
"There is no future there. You will forever be poor, and the violence just gets worse," Bulmaro said.
From USATODAY.COM
"I was very scared," Elivar recalled. "I didn't know what was waiting for me."
After a harrowing journey that would include abductions, beatings and nearly dying in the desert, today Elivar is a quiet ninth-grader in a Louisville school for new immigrants, awaiting another uncertain fate — this time in court. It's all part of the fallout from a child migrant crisis that, even as it has begun to wane, continues to reach into unlikely places far from the border.
According to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, at least 95 unaccompanied child migrants, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, were released to relatives in Jefferson County, Ky., from January to September to await deportation hearings.
That's just a small portion of the more than 52,000 children who have flooded over the border this year, sparking a political uproar and straining immigration agencies and shelters. That flood slowed in September amid tougher enforcement in Mexico and U.S. efforts to dissuade migrants.
"It's amazing what they've been through," said Gwen Snow, principal of Jefferson County's ESL Newcomer Academy, which since January has seen an influx of such students, including some who were raped or witnessed deaths. "These kids are really resilient, though."
The surge in unaccompanied child migrants is expected to reach 60,000 through 2014, compared with 8,000 in 2008, according to a congressional report.
Experts say it was rooted in a mix of factors, chief among them an increase in violent crime in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, including extortion and killings by criminal syndicates and gangs, said Maureen Meyer, who studies migrant issues with the Washington Office for Latin America.
Elivar had heard similar stories in his impoverished village in the western highlands of Guatemala. He grew up as one of eight children in a family where the parents worked as intermittent laborers.
They lived without running water and often went hungry, he said, adding that he had to quit school in the fourth grade because his parents couldn't pay school fees. In recent years, he said, gangs had terrorized the area with extortion and violence.
"They would come into your home, for money," Elivar said.
In late May, armed gang members who knew he had relatives in the U.S. threatened to kill Elivar within two weeks if he didn't pay them. He knew two of his cousins had made it across the border, so he asked his uncle to lend him the equivalent of roughly $400 to leave the country.
"I told (my parents) if I stayed, they would not only harm me but probably them too," he said.
By early June, Elivar was traveling alone — crossing into Mexico to the city of Frontera Comalapa, where an aunt helped him buy a $110 bus ticket north. After long days of bouncing along Mexico's roads and highways, Elivar arrived in the town of Altar, Sonora, 60 miles south of the Arizona border.
He didn't have nearly enough to pay a smuggler, but he planned to ask his brother, Bulmaro Mazariegos, 23, to wire money from Louisville. He hoped to cross the desert and turn himself in to the border patrol, then make his way to Louisville.
Within an hour of arriving in Altar, criminals had relieved Elivar of his cash and beaten him and were demanding his brother's phone number to seek a ransom.
Far to the north, Bulmaro's cellphone rang while he was working in a farm field in Kentucky. He decided it would be fruitless to call the Mexican police and the next day wired $1,500 through a Western Union-like service.
After the money arrived, Elivar was driven for two hours with a hood over his head before being dropped in the desert. The car sped away. Without food, water or any idea where he was, Elivar began walking. All around him was arid, thorny brush. He wasn't sure which direction he was heading. For days, he said he ate fruits of prickly pear cactus to stave off dehydration.
"I would walk during the day and at night I would sleep," he said. "It was like a wilderness, there was nothing. I was very thirsty and hungry." At one point, Elivar said, he felt like he was "almost dying."
He finally stumbled into a small town.
Two Spanish-speaking men approached him and brandished weapons, and once again he found himself being held by a succession of captors. For days, Bulmaro responded to three demands of wire transfers totaling $3,500.
"I said, 'Don't worry, I'll do whatever they ask,' " Bulmaro reassured Elivar when speaking to him on his captors' phone.
In late June, Elivar and several other captives were placed in a car with hoods on. They drove until he heard the car pulling over and the engine shutting off. He heard an English-speaking voice, and his captors told him to pull off his hood. He saw they'd been stopped by a U.S. sheriff.
Unable to speak English, Elivar could not tell the officers that the men were captors. He said he doesn't know what became of them.
"We were grateful," he said. "They saved us."
TEARFUL REUNION IN LOUISVILLE
Transferred from immigration authorities to a Health and Human Services-contracted shelter full of young migrants near Phoenix, Elivar got food, water, clothing and medical care from a doctor who told him he was badly dehydrated and lucky to be alive.
In August, the U.S. government released Elivar to Bulmaro and put him on a commercial flight to Louisville, where he would await his legal proceedings. Arriving at Louisville's airport, he and his brother embraced, tears flowing down their faces.
Today Elivar lives under the care of Bulmaro in Louisville. Bulmaro, who works at a restaurant, is awaiting his own immigration proceedings.
Each day Elivar takes a school bus to Newcomer Academy. School officials said that they are working to find ways to increase staff and counseling services partly for children dealing with trauma from solo journeys.
"In my dreams, (my captors) still have me. They're still holding me. I haven't been able to get over it," said Elivar, who wants to become an attorney.
Rosie Bertles, one of his teachers, describes him as a quiet, serious, "very motivated student." She said he's rapidly improving despite his struggles from a lack of formal education. "He would make a great American citizen. If he can stay."
Elivar said he knows he might be sent back but is convinced that if he returns to his village he will be killed. He doesn't know where he would go, he said. Bulmaro said even without the threats, life back home holds little promise.
"There is no future there. You will forever be poor, and the violence just gets worse," Bulmaro said.
From USATODAY.COM
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