Christina Martinez

29
Christina comes from a small town in south Mexico, where she taught for two
years until 1999, when an earthquake badly damaged the school and it had to be
closed. At that point, she decided to try and make a new start in the USA. Her
dream was to cross into San Ysidro, go on to San Diego and make a better life for
herself.
She travelled north by bus to Mexico City and stayed with her uncle while she
raised some cash. She did odd jobs in restaurants and cleaning and saved enough
for the bus fare north to Tijuana, on the Mexican US border.
She stayed in a small shanty town close to the border. Conditions were very poor
in the shanty town, with no proper sewage system. She had to cook over an
open fire and collect water from a standpipe.
Christina and four friends made three attempts to cross the border illegally, at
Tecate, where there was no fence. On each occasion they were caught and
returned. Eventually, they did make it safely to San Diego County but only with
the help of a smuggler (coyote). Each of them paid him $6000 to help them get
into the US.
It's been three years since she made her move.
Tlaxiaco, Mexico
San Diego, USA
Brown
Brown
5ft 7
65kg
Saraa
29
To Saraa, the easy route took
1 fake passport, $15,000
12 countries Ethiopia to Sudan to Brazil to Venezuela to Colombia to Panama
to Cost Rica to Nicaragua to El Salvador to Guatemala to Mexico to USA.
An expensive cast of connection men, thats what women call the smugglers
who passed them from one country to another, from hotels to safe houses,
often with other migrants. She floated for hours on an open boat. She walked
for days through a Panamanian jungle. Border after border, immigration officials
asked where she was going and her answer never changed: U.S.A.
Country after country let her through. Then, finally she walked across a bridge
into Brownsville, Texas. Her youngest sister did not make that walk she
drowned taking a different route to the U.S.
Her husband did not make it, but he is still being detained by immigration
authorities, as asylum seekers often are.
Ethiopia
USA
Brown
Brown
5ft 4
65kg
Omar
29
Omar, a construction worker who now lives in Los Angeles, started his journey as an
undocumented migrant in January 1990.
He boarded a bus in his native Apopa, a small town in central El Salvador. To reach the
US-Mexico border, he first had to travel through Guatemala and Mexico. A four-day bus
ride left him in southern Mexico, ready to board the Train of Death. "The cargo trains
didn't stop, you had to jump on board before it was gone," he says. "At the beginning it
was scary. I let one train go past because I thought I couldn't do it. Then I got used to it.
But it's true that your physical abilities determine whether you make it all the way north
or you just give up or suffer an accident that can be fatal. Train guards would open an
empty coach for them, with no seats or ventilation, and would seal the doors in between
stops. He travelled for hours jammed into a car with about 200 fellow migrants and
suffered severe dehydration. He had his first glimpse of southern Mexico in the state of
Chiapas, where the train made its first stop. He spent the night at a shelters for migrants
volunteers had set up along the road. "I saw people dying falling from the metal stairs of
the Beast, some of them mutilated under its wheels. I started thinking that it was harder
than I'd been told. I didn't know if I could do it. Days later, he ran into immigration
officers and was deported back to El Salvador. Six months after that he tried again, asking
an acquaintance to guide him in exchange for money. He was mugged and beaten on
board the Beast. He also lost all his money: he had given it to a woman he had
befriended, thinking that it would be safer with her, but she was also attacked.
To raise the cash to continue, he worked for a month as a cleaner and gardener for a
wealthy elderly couple of Russian origin in Tonal, in the state of Jalisco.
El Salvador
Los Angeles, USA
Brown
Brown
5ft 9
65kg