“Excuse me, where am I? Can you help me? ”. Anjel Fernández, an agent of the US Border Police (CBP), is stunned when this 10-year-old boy appears in the middle of the desert in southern Texas. Speak Spanish like him. He immediately understands who that little one is, the lost air, his face marked by tears, soaked in rain, who comes towards him. Only. He was in his jeep and was driving home. He saw the boy, he swerved towards him, he stopped. The child was not afraid. He had been wandering aimlessly for a day. He was cold and hungry. He plucked up courage and asked for help. “Didn’t you come with dad or mom?” Asks the agent. “No, I’m alone. I was with a group… and in the end I came all the way here to ask for help ”, replies the boy. “I came, otherwise who would I ask for help?”.
The agent pampered him, refreshed him with a chocolate bar, tried to understand better. The little boy explained that it had been abandoned. He was part of a caravan of over 180 people that went up from Central America to the southern border of the USA. The group stopped for one night and left at dawn. He was still asleep and when he woke up he didn’t find anyone else. He is from Nicaragua, one of the many left to go by his parents who, with a broken heart, choose salvation for their children rather than seeing them grow up in misery, without a future, with few alternatives but to be enrolled by the narcos gangs and then finish. behind the bars. Well that goes.
The story of José (we’ll call him that), Nicaraguan, ended up on social media. Agent Fernández has decided to post on his Facebook profile the video that immortalizes the meeting together with the first words and the request for help. It is the new emblem of an imposing exodus that takes place at these latitudes. Often in indifference or a disdain in any case detached.
The boy was walking east of Rio Grande City, a town 60 kilometers from McAllen on the US side of the border between Texas and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The images of this almost surreal dialogue have been shared 17,000 times in less than an hour. A great manifestation of affection and solidarity on a drama that involves 171 thousand migrants who have come under the Wall in recent months. The one in March recorded a record of arrivals as it had not happened since 2006. 11 percent of migrants are minors, boys and girls sent by their parents alone in the hope that they will be able to pass the checks and be welcomed in the US. They usually have a relative or friend of the family waiting for them on the other side. But they have to face the long march to the north alone. Between ambushes, extortionatements, risks of violence, including sexual violence, lightning kidnappings, requests for ransoms. A real lottery of life.
José was taken to the Donna Shelter Center in Texas for his case to be examined. The US authorities have 12 hours to decide on the refugees’ requests. They are unable to dispose of the wave that overwhelmed them. Minors are accommodated as best they can but sleep huddled on makeshift beds. In recent days, photos had been published that portrayed them as if they were in a prison, raising a crawl of protests and controversies.
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