Guatemalan lives upturned by failed immigration bids apnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from apnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
TIZAMARTE, Guatemala (AP) Alvina Jerónimo Pérez tries to avoid going out. She doesn’t want to see neighbors. She’s even changed the chip in her cellphone since her failed journey to the United States.
The 42-year-old woman is fearful her unsuccessful migration could cost her more than she can bear even the single-story concrete block house her husband built on land passed down from her great grandparents in this mountaintop hamlet in south-central Guatemala.
Her husband, Anibal García, had recently added another room onto the back. The family had borrowed money to pay for the addition and was having trouble paying. Jerónimo thought she might be able to find the money if she migrated.
Poverty, climate change drive Guatemala s poor to migrate apnews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from apnews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
AP Photo/Oliver de Ros
5 Jun 2021
The Biden team’s permissive migration enforcement policy is causing economic chaos among poverty-stricken Central Americans who took unsustainable debt to try to sneak into the U.S. but failed.
Now, these deported migrants, many of whom used their house as collateral, are indebted and scared that their unsuccessful migration could cost them more than they can bear.
Lax border policies under President Joe Biden are attracting more migrants, prompting them to take out loans that fill the coffers of smugglers, who often work for drug cartels and rape women and girls during the journey. If the migrants fail to make it into the U.S., they will find themselves deeper in the red.