Going into your house in Huntington Hae on long island, Victor and Marina saw on the kitchen table neatly laid out keys, wallet and mobile phone of his son Alex. The neighbor said that their son brought from home came in 3 jeeps men — in house Slippers,shorts and handcuffs.
Alex was relieved to be away from the gangs in Honduras, and he soon stopped looking over his shoulder on the streets of Huntington.
His parents told him that if he did well in school, he d have a good life.
Then he drew a school mascot on a calculator https://t.co/2IqpBkkCSn
— ProPublica (@ProPublica) December 29, 2018
The light path
Alex enrolled in school a year and a half ago, shortly after arriving on long island from Honduras. At school he first felt happy. Shy teen whole life before that I played video games alone at home and watching football on TV.
In Honduras, parents seeking to protect children from street gangs, and encourage their retreat. With other children, Alex spoke only school in a village. But there they all were preparing to be workers in the field, academic performance is not required — just not rowdy. Alternative to a grueling labor for pennies on the ground — only gang. Alex saw on the street the bandits with well-known tattoo of 3 dots on his forehead. They meant 3 places ready to go for the gang her party: jail, hospital, morgue. Such is the alternative to plantations.
Alex’s father found son another alternative, the USA. Victor is the man we need. He built the house when he was 18 years old, married Marina, the most beautiful, while educated girl in this little village in the mountains of Honduras. He succeeded in everything.
In 2010 Victor moved to the United States and settled in Huntington. Pretty quickly settled, began to send money to the family. But in Honduras, the money attracted the attention of bandits. The Marina twice robbed, then shot her uncle, knocking him before the teeth and shattered every finger. Little Alex got waylaid on the way to school and kept him even a trifle.
So, when Alex turned 17 years old, Victor had saved and borrowed $4 million, hired a «coyote» to deliver Alex to the US border and Mexico. 29 Dec 2015 Alex crossed the bridge at the checkpoint and the guards told US that he feared for his life at home. Being an unaccompanied minor, he had the right to remain in the U.S. until the case is heard (and this could take years), and he was allowed to go to the father on long island.
Began a white stripe. He felt it when the first time was on a plane to new York and looked out the window. When traveling with my dad from the airport home. When checked in made by father room. (Huntington Victor rented an apartment in the basement.) The room was small and dark, but my father painted the walls in bright yellow, that was fun.
Soon, the United States came Alex’s mother Marina. She worked as a cleaner in the local offices, and in the morning, accompanied his son to school. His father worked as a gardener. Alex went to school and back on the bike by these beautiful, perfectly manicured lawns and quiet houses and did not feel like a stranger. He quickly got out of the habit of looking around and suspicious of oncoming passers-by as needed at home, in Honduras.
The school was staffed by nearly half Hispanic. Alex was a great addition to the school team. He first time became popular, praised his teachers, respected friends, he had a girlfriend.
Here in Huntington, he always said that the US not Honduras. USA is the land of opportunity and freedoms. With a good education, he can become whoever you want to, choose a job you love, find your thing. Of course not all the boys here frantically gnawed science… But Alex was chewing on. And compensating for its former seclusion, kid’s clubs, played in the orchestra, the football team, participated in student government. He was struggling with the arts and Humanities, teachers liked his essay about the history, about freedom.
Report: Questions Raised About Deportation of Huntington High School Student https://t.co/Gxc0Aak0BE via @huntingtonnynow
— HuntingtonNow (@HuntingtonNYNow) December 28, 2018
Mathematical error
14 June 2017 Alex passed the standard testing in mathematics in the school. Mathematics was given to him worse than other items, but the guy tried… though he didn’t love algebra. When I started to sound in the class of all those numbers, puzzles about the profit of the owner of the carnival booths, parabolas, etc., he was distracted, staring out the window, doodling something on the leaves. Once I even absentmindedly, he drew with a pencil a school calculator.
Weird: Alex make really great essay about the United States, and when he was faced with a difficult algebra and waited for the bad marks, mechanically drew the national symbols of Honduras… Not noticing the game of his subconscious, after class, the guy handed over the calculator and went to another class. And suddenly he was summoned to the Director.
On the table the Director was a calculator with a picture of Alex numbers 504. This is the telephone code of Honduras. But it is also used as an attribute of the gang MS-13. The guy showed his page in Facebook with a blue-white cover (colors of Honduras) and noticed that in his hand — the same blue-and-white bracelet.
Police say that Latin American adolescents often use the symbolism of the country of origin. As max nostalgia, but not exactly proof of their belonging to a gang. They know: «groping the kid» will not be drawing a gang symbol, which is not a member, the more the symbolism of different bands, which usually are quarreling among themselves. But ICE think otherwise: the conviction of immigration, «address to this symbolism means a willingness to participate.» Alex knew that members of MS-13 go to Nike Cortez sneakers and blue bandanas. He was not wearing a and thought that was enough.
For 3 days he was expelled from school.
Alex, a Honduran student at Huntington High, doodled his school’s mascot, a blue devil with horns. Later, he was arrested and deported for being a suspected MS-13 gang member. How a crackdown on MS-13 is affecting innocent high school students. https://t.co/z6pKQTCP9R
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 27, 2018
ERROR. Error 504
A month earlier, the classmate Alex was arrested by ICE and did not return to school. He seemed like a normal guy, but there were rumors that he was accused of involvement in a street gang MS-13. Then on the way to Church detained one person. Alex and his friends began to notice that for many children no longer go to school. The girls began to post to Facebook information about the detention of his boys, to write long essays with crying emoticons.
Coming home, he forgot about the band — they were distracted by the TV, a PlayStation, a fridge full of food, chat on the phone with my girlfriend. Alex watched the news, did not know about operation Matador, conducted in the state of new York agreed with the police, ICE received information from police departments and from officers in the schools database on adolescent migrants from Latin America.
The database is often anecdotal, anything not specifically pointing, giving only in the case of some crime tips to the police in which direction to search. On the basis of this information, of course, one can not be prosecuted. But ICE may not have intended someone to court for criminal offences. But indirect information about the possible relations of the teenager with the gang was enough to raise the issue of administrative detention, and even deportation.
MS-13 was able to proliferate as effectively and rapidly as they have in the U.S. due in large part to sanctuary policies in states like CA and NY. pic.twitter.com/TM5a2EV19o
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) December 29, 2018
«Life line has evolved to the point»
Parents for several days trying to track down the son until he found him in prison in new Jersey, which served as a detention center for immigration detainees. There were many students at the school Alex.
However, to visit him in prison was dangerous: the parents themselves could hold. Here, in a cell the size of a school cafeteria, where there were dozens of teenagers, Alex and began to chat with Hannah Dreyer, who worked at ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine. When Hannah saw him first, he was in an orange jumpsuit, with a wound on the big toe and the creepy fingernails.
At first, the guy briskly, being sure that all these ridiculous charges against him will soon be removed, he will be back in school and it ends like a bad dream. But it was summer, school was already in classes, it was week after week, and it didn’t move. Alex remained in jail.
The detainees were killing time staring out the window, or watched on TV football games and TV shows. As it was not like the clock in the aircraft that Alex flew to new York. How did it become like a child in Honduras! Looks like Alex still got through code 504 and told him homeland.
The management of the prison did not consider these guys the real criminals, so they rarely visited the local «school» classes — priority given to the bandits. «Even if I leave, I’m stupid?» asked Alex her parents during one of the night calls. Another time he told his mother how he had to jump from the camera when they started the fight, pohvastat that has managed to keep his clothes from contact with blood (this is important)…
In the course of the trial, ICE agents are unable to provide any evidence of Alex’s participation in MS-13. Yes, they were not particularly trying, but the ICE materials the government had stepped up his case for asylum. Data migration police was enough to refuse. Parents are saving money for a car, gave all his savings to the lawyer to bring all the documents in order. Even the Director of the school in Huntington, has written a letter positive feedback to Alex. In your documents folder there were diplomas and accolades of teachers…
When Victor told Alex that the other disciples of Huntington Haya detained as part of operation «Matador» was released, the man thought that he too will soon fall on the hearing on the detention and to be released.
But the hearing was postponed, and in December 2017 was already summoned to a meeting on the case for asylum in a Federal immigration court in new York. Typically, these processes go on for weeks, but the judge Lauren F. Weintraub hour of the meeting ordered to be deported Alexa. He was lying on the bed in the cell and cried when the lawyer explained to him that you can still appeal that the case is not closed.
An appeal was filed immediately, but the case dragged on for six months, and all this time Alex remained in prison. In June 2018, the appeal was rejected. The lawyer wrote the following, and we had to wait, to endure and to hope and to remain in the chamber. Time seems to have stopped. For the year, Alex saw 6 times endured prison corpses: 3 suicides and 3 deaths «from boredom.» It was beyond his power.
Finally, in prison, guy explained that his release, if he would accept deportation. It broke. When once again he brought the documents with the request to accept the deportation, he signed them. His father was devastated, the mother wanted to abandon his own application for asylum and to return with her son to Honduras, but Victor insisted that the wife left and together they tried again to get Alex to new York.
7 July 2018, despite all the requests of the son of parents still came to the prison to say goodbye. It was a huge risk, but for them it was unthinkable to leave without seeing him, perhaps for the last time. In the security Department Marina showed state identity, which recently won the Victor imposes his Honduran passport, and was worried that it may ask about legal status.
The 15-minute date was in a room with no Windows. From the time of the arrest, Alex had grown more than an inch, but became so pale and thin, looked older than my father. Victor’s shoulders fell and he cried. Marina was given paper towels to wipe away the tears, when she wept, leaning against a white prison wall.
ICE HSI is attacking MS-13’s global criminal enterprise by denying MS-13 leaders access to the illicit funds used to continue fueling the gang violence in Central America and the United States. pic.twitter.com/GoShtoN0VB
— ICE (@ICEgov) December 20, 2018
La Libertad
24 July 2018 Alex got off the plane in San Pedro Sula in Honduras. His parents decided that he will not be able to return to his hometown, because become a target for the police and MS-13 that gets him deported for Association with the gang. The guy sent to her aunt in La Libertad is a mountain village with pastel pink and green houses, alternating with mango and coconut trees on the gently sloping streets. Aunt Olga found him a room in a boarding house a block away from a narrow square with a faded white and gold colonial Church. The room had a concrete floor, a toilet and a sink in the corner, in the chamber Alex in the infirmary. Aunt put up a mirror, but he turned it to the wall.
Alex was afraid to go outside. When he got out of his room, the first thing he saw was the inscription «MS-13», coarsely daubed on the wall across the street. Old men with guns guarded the small shops, young people with tattoos MS-13 on their faces and necks and demanded from everyone the money in the first weekend on the square shot some man.
He was sitting at home, chatting with friends on long island, sometimes watching the news about the US on TV. Was calling parents every night. They proposed to send him clothes and shoes, which he left in Huntington, but he declined. He asked for help to go back to new York.
Victor couldn’t stand to think that he and Marina crossed the bridge, leaving Alex on the other side. He again took the money, replaced the housing on cheaper and at the end of September called Alex, saying that he found a coyote.
On September 15th, Central America (#Honduras #ElSalvador, #Chile, Colombia, costarica, #Guatemala & #Nicaragua) celebrated its 197th #IndependenceDay. There’s a lot of mixed feelings knowing the struggles Nicaragua faces right now.
¡La Lucha Por La Libertad Sigue! #SOSNicaragua #nicaragualibre pic.twitter.com/WFia1n0HTy
— JamesArt (@Jaymz05) September 20, 2018
Trail coyote
24 Sep Alex went to the US border and Mexico. Coyote led the group of 7 people in the desert of Texas. They walked along the sand for 5 days, drinking rainwater from puddles, were roasted alive by day and shivered in the cold night in the sand. Finally on the highway, where at the appointed place they were to pick up the car. But instead, there was a truck American border guards. The group rushed into the desert. Alex ran stumbling a few hours until he fell to the ground to catch my breath. He dozed off and woke up feeling like his sniffing German shepherd…
Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are still refusing to fund the border wall. https://t.co/PMhRWWo9uP
— Conservative Tribune (@conserv_tribune) December 23, 2018
Alex was charged with illegal border crossing, for which he faces a prison term of 6 months. But a Federal judge has agreed to release Alex that if he pleads guilty and agrees to immediate deportation.
Now Alex has the conviction and 20-year ban on entering the United States. He will be 40 years before he can apply for a visa.
By mid-November, Alex returned to his concrete room in Libertad. Walking, he went to a local school. A security guard in a perfectly ironed trousers let him in and even arranged a tour. The complex of buildings with no Windows or blackboards among the banana trees. Walls, desks and even the teacher’s Desk was covered with the shaded figures. Someone wrote on the wall in Roman numerals the number of the eighteenth — sign of the gang Barrio 18.
Alex showed the school a coffee plantation, where students were used to working in the field. Coming coffee season — red coffee berries glisten in the dark bushes. The guard told Alex that many students are able to work in the fields and going to school. In terms of American money you can earn $3 a day, lured the guard of a former new Yorker. Alex asked, does work studies.
It turned out that the security he graduated from University and got a degree, but he was lucky that he got the job. Another school security guard has a degree in agriculture. «Education here does nothing — this country is full of doctors and engineers working as taxi drivers,’ said the guard. — That’s why my family moved to the United States.»
1/2 One variety included in the trial is IMLVT Lempira, a high Kareem kniesel Catimor variety developed & widely planted in Honduras. Last year, it was reported & confirmed that Lempira»s resistance to coffee leaf rust had broken down… pic.twitter.com/YX9blxuvmI
— WorldCoffeeResearch (@WCoffeeResearch) January 22, 2018
As stated on the official website of ICE during operation Matador in the summer of 2017 in Suffolk in total were detained 33 people. Only in the state of new York detained 45 people. Most of them are teenagers. The operation was massively attracted regular police officers in schools and school staff resources. 15 detainees, the investigation confirmed their involvement in gangs. The rest appeared before the immigration court.
Human rights defenders, defenders of the rights of adolescents and immigration lawyers have criticized ICE and trump applied for immigration authorities in all States the tactics of provocation and the use of unverified data for threats to migrants and their deportation. It’s methods are far from the police and, more likely, from the Arsenal of secret services. Whether it is the US and whether they agree with the fact that schools worked to such services by such methods? Many States, including new York, believe that there is, and in recent months has banned its police to assist ICE.
