10/14/22

By Josh Rubin

Venezuelans, driven from their homes by poverty and hunger and drawn by the possibility of a better life in the United States, have been making their way, along with others from other countries similarly afflicted, up along the spine of Central America. They pass through the Darién Gap, a strip of jungle that lies along the way. We are told, by reporters who have made the trip with the families that brave this harrowing place, that most of them, some of them sick, with bones broken and feet blistered, would never do it again.

Once through, they travel through countries inhospitable to them, the long road through Mexico, into the crime-riddled towns along the border with the U.S. to cross a border, where, until the day before yesterday, many were allowed to stay while awaiting a kind of mercy called asylum. But now that has changed.

Mexico has agreed to collude with our own government, to add Venezuelans to the list of nationalities that they will accept back into Mexico, expelled on the flimsy excuse of COVID risk. What it really is, is a plan to control the flow of humanity by a means that our country has relied on now for years: they will stop people by destroying their hopes for a decent life for themselves, for their families. They will turn people into the already deprived streets of border towns, to beg, to go hungry. To get word back to the folks at home still hoping, that hope is no more.

Their money gone, their baggage stolen, their bellies empty. That will teach them, won’t it?