2023-08-12 21:44:00
(CNN Spanish) — The city of Danlí, in eastern Honduras and the border with Nicaragua, has become the epicenter of foreign migrants who arrive in Honduras daily on their way to the United States.
According to what the delegate of the National Commissioner for Human Rights in Honduras (Conadeh) in Danlí, William Rolando Alvarado, told CNN, an average of 2,500 migrants from various countries are entering this city daily and this has crowded some public squares.
According to the official, “Danlí is having serious problems due to the collapse of the migrant population in transit.”
It has become normal to see how public squares or small parks are crowded with tents or shacks made of plastic by migrants, added the human rights defender.
Gabriela Camacho, who is traveling from Venezuela, says that she has had to spend the entire journey outdoors with her three daughters, her sister and a nephew who accompany her due to lack of financial resources.
“My family nucleus, my sister, my nephew and my daughters have always slept on the street,” said the 25-year-old woman.
He added that in order to travel they have to live off the charity of people and some money sent to them by relatives who are in the United States.
According to figures from the National Institute of Migration of Honduras (INM), from January 2 to August 9 of this year some 203,000 foreign migrants entered Honduras, of these 34,134 are minors.
Elisa Ríos, from the Organization Doctors Without Borders in the city of Danlí and who cares for migrants, assures that for two months they have been seeing a greater flow, especially in family nuclei.
He added that medical and psychological care for this population has increased by almost 500%. He assures that, from 60 daily, it went up to about 350 and “the demand for attention in the child population, this shows us that there is a greater number of family nuclei entering the area.”
In the streets of the city of Danlí, migrants are seen trying to get money from the sale of sweets with their children, something that allows them to obtain resources to continue on their way.
Joel Suárez, who is traveling from Venezuela, told CNN that he arrived in Honduras 15 days ago without money and added: “What you have to do is buy a small packet of lollipops to gradually collect the little tickets and move forward little by little.”
Yarzuris Hernández, a Venezuelan citizen who is traveling with her two children and her husband, commented that throughout the journey they have had to be selling sweets on the street and they will continue to do so until they reach their final destination.
He also said that: “We have already passed seven countries, we are missing three, two and a half because it has been Guatemala and Mexico and from there, well, the United States.”
All these migrants had to cross the Darién jungle to reach Honduras and a United Nations press report released on August 2 reveals that more than 250,000 migrants and refugees crossed that jungle from January to July of this year.
For migrants, going through this journey is one of their worst nightmares. Yoimer Madrid, for example, says that crossing that place is not normal, but that they have to take risks despite the dangers that are on the way.
“In that jungle there are dead, not all of them come out alive, others fracture or break a foot,” he said.
Isamar Hernández, also a Venezuelan national, recommended not to cross that jungle to those who are thinking of doing so. “I advise everyone from the bottom of my heart never, not out of envy, to ever take revenge through that jungle, I never saw anything, I saw about seven dead, that’s the worst thing there can be.”
The head of the border patrol for the Rio Grande Valley sector, in Texas, Gloria Chávez, assured Honduran journalists in a virtual conference that the largest number of people detained by that southern border so far this year are Honduran nationals. followed by citizens of Venezuela, Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
“We in the Rio Grande Valley there in South Texas have already detained more than 250,000 people,” said the US official.
Chávez added that the border patrol has also managed to find and rescue some 44,000 minors so far this year, among them, he said, children in the arms that were carried by their older brothers.
The official called on people who are thinking of making the trip without documents to the United States not to do so and that from their countries they can enter the web pages authorized by the government and make an appointment that allows them to start the process of immigration and thus avoid endangering their lives.
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