Solsiree Petit traveled with his two children always by his side. From the state of Falcón, in northern Venezuela, for more than a year they walked and advanced together in cars, combis, buses and on the train known as the beast to Ciudad Juárez, on the northern border of Mexico, at the doors of the United States. But there, a week before Donald Trump took possession, they separated. Fearful of what could hold the return of the Republican to the White House, the children, Danniery, who is now 17 years old, and Danny, 10, crossed the border and requested asylum as unaccompanied minors.
The mother planned to reach them on January 29, the day of her immigration appointment granted by the CPB One application. However, just minutes after Trump swore as president on January 20, the official migration application was disabled and all future appointments were canceled. Since then, Petit Malvive in Juárez: no papers in order, he works where he can win the weights that pay a precarious and shared rental. And of her children, who now meet her father, with whom she no longer has a relationship, knows little or nothing.
In a sea of figures on migrants, Petit’s case is one of those that is not counted. It is known that the arrival of Trump generated an inverse flow, from north to south, of people who decided to undertake the trip back home before the closed doors of the United States. Also that there are others, especially compatriots of Petit, who want them to mount them on a plane back to Venezuela from Mexico. But Petit cannot return to the house he left in his country, after, as director of a rural school, he refused to receive military instruction. It is trapped in Mexico and dedicated to the abyss, a world of shadows where the dangers, in the form of exploiting employers, varied criminals, or even unscrupulous police, are the order of the day.
He has tried to follow the official paths, but he has found only walls. More than two months ago he processed asylum application, but has not even obtained a receipt confirmation by Mexican authorities. In one of the many walks to the border pass of Juarez, who made with less and less hope that suddenly the doors opened, he approached the informative position of the government program called Mexico hugs you, originally aimed at connecting repatriated people with job opportunities, but extended to the general public after mass deportation projections from the United States have not materialized. “They said there was work in (the chain of grocery stores) oxxos. I thought it was a good option, there are several near my house. But when I introduced myself they rejected me immediately because I had no papers,” he has a despair that has been installed permanently in his voice.
He went through a restaurant where she worked a few weeks before they accused her of breaking a dishes and charged it, in practice by denoting her salary. Without a signed contract, Petit had nothing to resort to. Now he is in another where he is paid in time, but in which he prefers to keep his head down, because he suspects that his companions are abused or trafficked. He has heard that the younger and beautiful girls, also migrants, are part of the “flower garden” of the boss.
It has been used to that world immersed for a long time. In Mexico City he was living for a year, he counts by video call from the small kitchen of the floor he rents. I expected a migratory appointment and worked in a restaurant where I charged in cash and had no contract. Until Trump’s electoral victory in the United States injected an uncontrollable eagerness to cross north before he took possession of the fear that, as effectively happened, the border was closed overnight.
He began to move to build a group of acquaintances to go to the border together and cross on December 18, the Migrant Day, when the misinformation in networks said that the United States would let everyone enter for 24 hours. He recruited his old neighbor of Venezuela, who was also in Mexico City; equally to an old student who tracked on Facebook. There were 11 people in total, four adults, other adolescents or children.
The journey ended with the small group being arrested by Mexican police as they walked in the Samalayuca desert, about 50 kilomer to the south of Ciudad Juárez. For a miracle, says Petit, they were rapidly released and not sent to Tapachula, at the southern end of the country, as usually done to migrants arrested on their way to the United States. In the early hours of December 18 they crossed the Bravo River. Once on the other side, he counts, the border patrol stopped them and forced them to walk without water or food for hours until the nearest official access, and there they denied the income.
The following weeks spent them in shelters in Juarez while spent their last pesos and decided what to do next. One afternoon, teenager Danniery decided to cross alone and stop being a weight for his mother. A few days later, Danny, the youngest, joined the idea, and on January 12 they presented themselves to the border with the United States and requested asylum officially. They alleged that they were being persecuted by the Mexican posters and passed without major problems. In the distance, Sol saw them for the last time.
Back in the shelter, he once again tried to get an appointment, this time for her alone. That change had to make all the difference: after more than a year, waiting unsuccessfully, even paying for alleged intermediaries who secured a date, the CBP One app cited it for January 29. The migrants who had become an ephemeral family at Christmas that had passed together celebrated because Petit would soon meet their children.
But then Trump arrived at Washington and the illusion broke. The migratory application went out and Petit was facing a reality that knows that it shares with several that are also stuck in Mexico, unintentionally or being able to return to Venezuela, and with the closed step to the United States. The question is how many more.
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