Picking Up What Immigrants Leave Behind: Full-Time Work at the American Border | World | Mexico | USA | Immigrants | Boundary | the world

Marco Antonio González was fishing in the Rio Grande on the border Mexico Y America, But with the daily influx of hundreds of migrants, he found another way to make a living on the coast.

“One time I got 100 dollars in a bag while fishing and I started coming. Now here there are lots of clothes all over the street (…) here I stay”He contacted.

The 37-year-old collects clothes left behind by migrants as they cross the Mexican river, the last hurdle hundreds of thousands of people face each month to reach US territory, and takes them to a shelter in Pietras Negras on the border. gets food.

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“I take her from here to the migrant home. Mother (Religion), because she already knows me, gives me good food, rice, beans, oil, toilet paper.”González told AFP on the riverbank in the Texas city of Eagle Pass.

On the US side, the conservative government of Texas has sealed off a good portion of the coast with thick barbed wire to restrict access to the daily influx of migrants.

After thousands of kilometers of road from countries such as Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, many abandon the few belongings they have left behind on these shores.

It was daily bread for Gonzales and others like him who crossed the river daily and collected what they could from the American side.

“It has become a way of life for people living on the border.” An Operation Lone Star official in Texas said on condition of anonymity.

“You see them in Brownsville and other towns, they come and look for things to sell or trade. “Some make a living from this, others do it to help other immigrants who have nothing.”Kasu commented that evening fell at Eagle Pass.

“You need more than one”

““I’ve been doing this for four years.” González said a group of about thirty people left while being transferred to the bank after crossing the river.

A young man, who went into the water just before others were helped to cross, accused him of stealing his bag, which contained his phone and identity documents, and began to cry.

Gonzalez refused and allowed him to look into his bag.

“I am this, they think I am that”said. “On the contrary, I’m here to help.”

The man, who knows the river and its capricious currents, says many also accuse him of sending migrants from shore to shore.

“Nothing, sometimes I have to help them because their children are drowning.”

“Many have drowned here. (…) And sometimes the police beat them and throw them around,” he said, referring to the Mexican side.

González, a father of three, sees dozens of migrants on the streets of Pietras Negras every day. He says there is no dearth of demand. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, his magic.

“I don’t like to see things go to waste. She motions him around to where the T-shirts and pants are still hanging on the barbed wire. “Because there are people who need it more than you.”

Source: AFP

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