Will Ginger Get to Stay?

In November 2017, Ginger was walking home from school in the overcrowded neighborhood in Honduras where she grew up. Then, something happened that changed her life.

A woman approached her asking for help. While Ginger was distracted talking to the woman, some men grabbed Ginger and kidnapped her. The men were likely part of a criminal gang or drug cartel. They held her for several days in an abandoned house, along with some other young people. Just 15 years old at the time, she was terrified. After a few days, when no one was looking, Ginger escaped through a window.

“I ran,” she recalls, speaking through a translator. “I got out without knowing where I was going.”

With the help of a stranger who gave her money for a bus, she made her way back to her home in Tegucigalpa (tuh-goo-see-GAHL-puh), Honduras’s capital. She lived there with her grandfather. He took her to the police station to report what had happened. But it wasn’t long before Ginger realized that the police weren’t on her side. In Honduras, police are often in cahoots with the drug cartels.

“I was afraid because I thought they were going to take me back to the kidnappers again,” she says. And she thought that might mean being raped or even killed.

“They said they were going to help, but they didn’t help,” Ginger says of the police. “There is no justice in my country.”

Ginger and her grandfather left the police station. A week later, her grandfather decided that for her own safety, Ginger must leave Honduras. So Ginger said goodbye in January 2018, just after she turned 16. She then started on a journey to the United States. It was a trek that ultimately took her 3,000 miles away from the home she’d always known.

Ginger is one of about 38,000 children from Central America who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or adult in 2018. (Her last name is being withheld to safeguard her privacy.) Like Ginger, many unaccompanied children try to sneak across the border illegally. Others present themselves to the border patrol and ask for help. Since 2014, more than 260,000 Central American children have come to the U.S. by themselves.

“The families understand that there are serious risks involved in making the journey,” says Mark Greenberg of the Migration Policy Institute (M.P.I.), an immigration policy research center in Washington, D.C. “But they’re seeking to flee from terrible circumstances in their home countries.”

Most of these kids come from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. All three countries suffer from severe poverty and intense violence from gangs and drug cartels. The authorities are famously corrupt and often work with the criminals. As a result, they’re of little help in protecting people. 

“We’re definitely seeing a change in who’s coming to the southern border,” says Jessica Bolter of M.P.I. “It used to be dominated by mainly Mexican single migrants looking for jobs in the U.S. Now it’s more families and people who’re seeking humanitarian protection.”

Many of those arriving in the U.S. say their lives are at risk in their home countries, and they’re asking to be allowed to stay on those grounds. It’s a process called claiming asylum (see “Know the Difference,” right, and “Who’s Asking for Asylum?” below), and the number of migrants arriving in the U.S. who are using it has soared by almost 2,000 percent in the past decade.  

President Trump and many of his supporters say this is evidence that the asylum system is being abused.

“There is widespread abuse,” says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that favors immigration restrictions. “People know that if they say the right things and get into the asylum system that they’ll be able to stay in the U.S. for years as they wait for their case to even come up.” 

Immigration experts on both sides of the aisle agree that the U.S. asylum system is out of date and needs revamping. This issue has been thrust into the spotlight by the arrival in the past few months of several caravans of migrants from Central America, each with thousands of people seeking refuge here. Trump has said these migrants won’t be allowed into the country. He’s also sent U.S. troops to the border—and said they can shoot to kill if necessary—to keep the migrants out.

Many of those arriving in the U.S. say their lives are at risk in their home countries. They’re asking to be allowed to stay on those grounds. It’s a process called claiming asylum (see “Know the Difference,” right, and “Who’s Asking for Asylum?” below). The number of migrants arriving in the U.S. who are using it has soared by almost 2,000 percent in the past decade.

President Trump says this is evidence that the asylum system is being abused. Many of his supporters agree.

“There is widespread abuse,” says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that favors immigration restrictions. “People know that if they say the right things and get into the asylum system that they’ll be able to stay in the U.S. for years as they wait for their case to even come up.” 

Immigration experts on both sides of the aisle agree that the U.S. asylum system is out of date and needs revamping. This issue has been thrust into the spotlight by the arrival in the past few months of several caravans of migrants from Central America. Each caravan has had thousands of people seeking refuge here. Trump has said these migrants won’t be allowed into the country. He’s also sent U.S. troops to the border to keep the migrants out. And he’s said these troops can shoot to kill if necessary

Ginger’s journey from her home in Honduras to the U.S.-Mexican border took 22 days. She traveled on buses, in cars, and on foot with a man—a coyote, or smuggler—who her grandfather hired to guide her to the U.S. She had just one small bag with three pairs of pants and three shirts, and the sneakers on her feet. She wasn’t able to carry food or even a bottle of water with her. She remembers the long walks, the hunger, and the cold—she didn’t have a sweater with her, and they sometimes slept outside or in unheated warehouses.

“I started getting cramps from traveling, and I would cry,” Ginger says.

The one constant for Ginger was the fear. She was so scared, she says, that she hardly slept at all throughout the entire trip. There were a lot of other people around—other migrants and a lot of men—and she was afraid one of them would attack her at night.

“I didn’t know at what moment they could grab me if I was sleeping,” she recalls.

But Ginger wouldn’t allow herself to consider that she might not make it to the U.S.

Ginger’s journey from her home in Honduras to the U.S.-Mexican border took 22 days. She traveled on buses, in cars, and on foot with a man. He was a coyote, or smuggler, who her grandfather hired to guide Ginger to the U.S. She had just one small bag with three pairs of pants and three shirts, and the sneakers on her feet. She wasn’t able to carry food or even a bottle of water with her. She remembers the long walks, the hunger, and the cold. She didn’t have a sweater with her, and they sometimes slept outside or in unheated warehouses.

“I started getting cramps from traveling, and I would cry,” Ginger says.

The one constant for Ginger was the fear. She was so scared, she says, that she hardly slept at all throughout the entire trip. There were a lot of other people around, including other migrants and a lot of men. She was afraid one of them would attack her at night. 

“I didn’t know at what moment they could grab me if I was sleeping,” she recalls.

But Ginger wouldn’t allow herself to consider that she might not make it to the U.S. 

“I would beg God,” she says of those moments when she was most afraid. “I had faith in Him, and I was positive.”

At last, Ginger arrived at the U.S. border. In the middle of the night, she got in a small boat with four people to cross the Rio Grande. This river marks the border between Texas and Mexico for hundreds of miles. Not knowing how to swim, Ginger was terrified.

They made it across safely, stepping illegally onto U.S. soil without passing through a border station. Ginger walked for several hours through the woods before border patrol agents spotted her group. Petrified, she didn’t try to run.

The border patrol agents put her in a vehicle and took her to an immigration facility. Many other migrants were being held there. Ginger slept on the floor. The following day, agents took her to a large detention facility in Texas. There, many children who’d come from Central America on their own were being held. What she recalls most from that place was the food, which she considered terrible. She also remembers the frequent scolding from the guards.

Ginger hadn’t been in touch with her grandfather since she left Honduras a month earlier. But at the detention facility she began communicating with her mother, who’d been living illegally in the U.S. for a long time. When Ginger was young, her mother was raped in Honduras and fled the country fearing for her life. She left her children—Ginger and a brother four years older—with their grandparents.

“They would only allow us one call a week,” Ginger says, “and if they didn’t answer, we’d have to wait until the following week.”

After two months at the detention facility, Ginger was released to her mother, who had been living in Detroit. 

Last April, Ginger, who’s now 17, enrolled as a 10th-grader at a Detroit high school. When she started, she didn’t know anyone and didn’t speak any English. But after a few days, some kids who spoke Spanish befriended her. Things have been getting better since.

Not long after Ginger arrived in Detroit, her mother’s boyfriend heard about Neal Brand, a Detroit lawyer who helps undocumented migrants navigate the complicated legal process of applying for asylum in the U.S. He agreed to take Ginger’s case.

In November, President Trump announced new rules restricting the ability of many migrants to apply for asylum. He said only migrants who enter the U.S. through official crossing points would be allowed to apply. This new rule would make it much harder for migrants like Ginger who crossed illegally to gain asylum. But current immigration law allows migrants to file asylum claims regardless of how they entered the country. That’s why the new rule is being challenged in federal court.

Ginger knows that some Americans are hostile toward immigrants like her who’ve come to the U.S. illegally. She wants people to know that she came here “because of the injustice in my country, the insecurity that we live in. The children here have everything. They don’t have fear. They don’t have worries, and there’s justice, and they’re taken care of.”

Ginger’s dream is to study hard and become a psychologist someday. To do that, she’ll need some kind of legal status in the U.S. Brand says her application for asylum has been filed, but the government hasn’t ruled on it. A preliminary court hearing is scheduled for this month. Still, Brand says he expects it could take three years to resolve her case. While her claim is being considered, Ginger can’t be deported. But if she’s denied asylum, she’ll likely be sent back to Honduras. 

Ginger still faces many uncertainties. Despite them and knowing now how long and hard the journey from Honduras is, she says she would still do it all again.

It was worth all the risks, she says, “because I know that I’m safe here. Here, my only worry is that they’ll send me back to my country.”