The Mutilated And The Disappeared Along the US-Mexico Border

Migrant deaths at US–Mexico border increased 17% during year 2017. Interestingly, that same year the US Border Patrol reported that about half as many migrants had been apprehended during border crossings in the first six months of 2016, compared to the first six months of 2017. More deaths and less apprehensions, this data clearly indicates that the ratio to people dying to people trying to cross has to be way higher than 17%. This report does not identify what could be causing the change. However, historically, stricter immigration policies in the US have driven people to take more dangerous routes.

It is of course impossible to obtain a real number on the fatalities that occurred to Latin Americans attempting to get to the US. How could we even count them? Many of them begin their journeys in far south countries, being forced to cross multiple dangerous countries on their way north.

In the south of Mexico there’s a place called "Albergue Jesús el Buen Pastor del Pobre y el Migrante", a unique refuge for injured migrants.

"The shelter began in the home of Olga Sánchez, in 1990. At the time, Sánchez was in the hospital recovering from illness, and there she met a mutilated couple—migrants who had nowhere to go to recuperate. They had fallen off the train; one had lost an arm and the other a leg. Sánchez offered them a room in her house, and soon after she found herself going to the hospital to search for mutilated migrants with nowhere to go."

This shelter covers their basic needs at the same time that it provides the migrants with prosthesis and therapy. It serves an average of 1,400 women, men and minors per year, caring for them until they have fully recovered.

This article by Longreads guides us through the story of the shelter, the story of its founder and the life of the journalist who wrote it, at the same time that it draws a clear picture of the reality of a whole injured continent and the path that must be taken to cure it.