LAS VEGAS – Dénia’s weakness Savior they were his children. Criminal gangs realized years ago that working single mothers were prime targets for extortion. and one day it was her turn.
To prevent their 14-year-old girl from being kidnapped, they asked for $5,000, and to prevent their 16-year-old son from being killed, he had to join the ranks of gangs. The family did not answer. The next day he fled: under no circumstances could he pay these fees.
“I didn’t have a choice, I didn’t have that kind of money,” said Ana Estrada, head of the volunteer service binational migrant community support organization New Comienzos.
New Comienzos began operations in Mexico in 2015 to support returnees who needed emergency advice. upon arrival in a country unknown to them after many years of residence in the United States; its founder Israel Concha was one of them and recognized the need to develop mutual aid networks.
Upon his return to the American Union on a U visa (in January 2021), he opened first chapter of New Beginnings in Las Vegas as support for people leaving the border after they crossed the border to improve their living conditions, or because they have been victims of insecurity and violence, which has happened more frequently in recent years.
“The idea is to replicate the Little LA chapter (in the capital of Mexico) where the community gathers and supports each other, which is: “I have already gone through this process, I support you as you go,” Concha. said in an interview with this newspaper.
In this first phase of work in the American Union, New Comienzos supports English lessons, free legal and psychological consultations. in addition to training for those who want to learn about information technology or work under an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN).
An ITIN is a tax number issued by the Internal Revenue Service that helps people comply with United States tax laws and provide people who are not eligible for a Social Security number.
emergencies
Extortion is currently one of the main reasons for migration in Mexico and Central America.. In Las Vegas alone, New Comienzos supported seven people who would not have left their places of origin if they had not been put on a rock and a hard place with threats, intimidation and other acts of violence in order to obtain money or favors.
Among them are the cases of Mexicans José Luis Bojorquez and Daniela Amesquita, who found help in the United States due to Mexico’s lack of rule of law: one was required to use a valuables transport route to attack him; They asked another for a thousand pesos to let her do the laundry.
She’s in Sonora, he’s in Baja California, but the victims are all over the country. It hits businessmen, hoteliers, restaurateurs, taxi drivers, tuckers and street vendors, farmers, ranchers, no link in the economy escapes:
Either pay the criminals or pay with your life, as Guerrero Omar Reyes, chief of transport at the port of Acapulco, did on April 15 for refusing to collect dues from the union for organized crime.
Recently, thousands of businesses have closed due to the pressure of illegal payments to avoid dramatic and deadly acts such as arson of businesses, shooting at restaurants, kidnappings…
The situation is similar in Central America. According to Amnesty International, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico are currently marked as one of the most dangerous regions in the world due to lack of personal security, drug trafficking and corruption.
According to the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Environmental Funds, extortion does not end with the decision to emigrate, but extends to other variants of the same crime.
“Smugglers often extort money from migrants by threatening to kidnap their relatives. Extortion can also be done in the other direction: traffickers extort money from relatives of migrants who have already arrived in another country, demanding money from them so as not to harm the already migrated relative, ”he specified in the report on the subject.
In Dénia’s case, they also charged her to cross the border into the United States, said Ana Estrada, who in turn fled Mexico for denouncing other cases of extortion.
challenge after challenge
In New Beginnings, they identified two urgent needs for migrants upon arrival in the US: need for housing and lack of evidence to qualify for asylum or asylum status.
Salvadoran Denia, for example, failed to stabilize in Las Vegas. She doesn’t have a job and can’t get an apartment to live with her three kids (two teens and a baby) because the state of Nevada has a lot of restrictions on rent and hiring.
She is in a race against time because the US government has given her a year to prove that she is a victim of crime in her country, and the shelter she lived in for her first six months in the US has expired.
“These deadlines cause a lot of stress,” warns Estrada. “That’s why we think the shelter issue is a priority for New Comienzos: we’re in the process of getting started and we want to focus on women because they’re the most vulnerable.”
In addition to the problem of extortion, they are more exposed to human trafficking and domestic violence. Dénia can serve as an example: as soon as she separated from the couple, she was left with the whole migration problem, children and legal processes in one of the most difficult moments of extreme migration.
Source: La Opinion
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