The border is full of sad stories, but this latest about 12-year-old Noemi Alvarez Quillay could be the saddest in a long, long time. Like many, those who’ve crossed successfully and those who’ve died in the desert, she was trying to cross the border to her family during a long trek from Ecuador and then to her death in a Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in a children’s shelter.
From the New York Times:
“I went with a coyote and spent two months in Nicaragua and came back from there,” she wrote in a school information sheet.
She got a little closer this year. In March, a month after she left home, the police picked up Noemi and a coyote in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The authorities took her to a children’s shelter. She was described as crying inconsolably after being questioned by a prosecutor. A few days later, she was found hanged from a shower curtain rod in a bathroom at the shelter. Her death, ruled a suicide by Mexican authorities, remains under investigation by a human rights commission there.
This article appears in Apr 17-23, 2014.
We should enforce our immigration laws so no more children are tempted to come to the United States illegally.
It is precisely BECAUSE the U.S. enforces its immigration laws that fewer border crossers are unable to cross. They are tempted to come here because economic opportunities here are still greater than in their own countries. They are willing to take increasingly greater risks because they want work.
Chalk another border death up to a US border policy that only pays lip service to family reunification. Where are all the “family values” now?
We should change our immigration laws so no more children have to come here “illegally”.
Shame on the parent that put the child under such torment!
Really sad, I know that Mexico has their own sort of border problem as they detain (and often treat very poorly), people from Central America who are trying to get into Mexico as Mexico has a better economy than probably all central American economies, and of course, some are trying to get to the U.S.
There are no easy answers, every country has a need to enforce their borders. Probably the only thing that would cut-down on these border crossing would be if there was a “Latin American Renaissance” whereby living conditions improved in countries south of the border. With improving technology, and drones and such, in the coming years and decades it will probably be much harder to cross into the U.S..
Another typical sad story from the Weekly and this reporter. Maybe the parents bear some blame.
Maybe we don’t need 30 million more illegals here. We gain nothing.
I’m sure the victims share the blame. But I don’t see how we have to get something… We already got ours, right? We took it from someone else. And what did they “get”?