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Friend,
Tomorrow marks International Migrants Day, a day which aims to raise awareness about the challenges and difficulties faced by migrants, as well as their rights and stories. Among those stories is Hernan’s, who grappled with Trump’s family separation policy in 2017.
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My name is Hernan.
In 2017, we fled to the United States from Honduras with my son, who was very young.
We were running away, because people wanted to murder me.
On the journey to this country, we survived many dangerous things. In Mexico, we were kidnapped for nearly three months. Every day, we were threatened with high-caliber weapons. My son cried a lot.
We were desperate, disoriented, blaming ourselves because we had taken this journey.
In that dark place, a friend of mine who had already been in the United States told us that these guys were dangerous and that if we didn't escape... Well, we simply had to try to figure out a way to get away from them.
One night, when our kidnappers decided to move us, we sneaked out. My friend pointed out a path. We followed him until we had to cross the bridge, where he told us to cross to be safe.
But while we escaped our captors, I did not imagine the nightmare we were about to go through when we ran into Border Patrol.
I asked them for forgiveness. I was begging them to listen to me.
They shut me up. They tied me up by my feet and hands behind me and made me get on my knees, as if I was a terrorist. They threatened to throw me back to Mexico. They separated us from our children, who they called puercos (pigs), and threatened to give them up for adoption.
For a while, we thought they’d kept their promise. We didn’t hear from our children while we were sent from prison to prison, because they couldn't find space for us. When we had a hearing with a judge, I raised my hand and asked to speak. He told me to be quick. I told him that we came from Honduras, we came with our children, and we know absolutely nothing about them.
Despite that anguish, that desperation, that despair, the judge told me, "I am not solving your immigration cases for you. I am a criminal judge. What I am going to do is send you to prison."
He immediately sentenced us to two more months in prison. He was a cruel man, totally inhuman. I think he had no heart.
Still, we didn't care about our punishments. We only wanted to know where our children were.
But for months, no answers came, and I continued to be transferred from prison to prison. It was as if people had hearts of iron. There was no help. I was suffering, I didn't eat at all. I was very thin and maybe a little crazy. I would beat my chest in frustration and ask myself:
Why am I here? I'm not a criminal. I have never raped, I have never robbed, and I have never killed. I'm a working man, and I ran with my family because they wanted to kill me for what's mine.
I kept thinking it would have been better I’d stayed in Honduras, and they would have killed me, so I could have died with honor and not lost my son.
One day, I met someone from the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights. She said, "I have some news for you. I know where your son is, and he wants to talk to you."
That's when things started to change.
She got me out of prison. If it hadn't been for her, I think I would have lost my son, because I had no one here in this country. I had already lost my son once. But, thanks to her, I wouldn’t lose him again.
That is the story of what I went through to get here.
Something cruel, something inhuman, something no parent should ever face.
And that's the little bit that I can tell you.
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Help us fight to protect immigrant children and families from traumatizing separations by making a year-end donation today.
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Warmly,
Hernan
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Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights
2245 S. MICHIGAN AVE, SUITE 301,
Chicago, IL 60616
United States
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