Immigrants to Guatemala face rising costs when problems arise at home | Migration Issues

Quetzaltenango, Guatemala Jose Sica waits impatiently in his small shop, with rows of pink and blue plastic baby bicycles on the floor as well as unaffected phone chargers and screen locks on the back.

Looking at his blank log, Sica feels: “Today, I just sold two things,” he told Al Jazeera.

The opening of a store in Quetzaltenango, one of Guatemala’s largest cities, was the last gambling for Sica, who had previously spent 14 years working as a security guard in the United States. It was either successful with this business or moving north again.

It’s a financial crisis because of Covid-19 plague still operating in Central America, and its business struggling to get out of it, Sica has begun to question how much it would cost to be smuggled back into the US.

But prices have skyrocketed: When Sica moved north in 1996, he said, coyotes – self-employed facilitators who bring refugees and refugees across borders to provide them with funding – charged him about 25,000 quetzales ($ 3,200). Today, they pay up to 140,000 quetzales ($ 18,100) – the highest wealth in a country where almost half the population lives in poverty.

The price has risen in the middle of the epidemic and change migratory adjustments, according to more than a dozen sources surveyed by Al Jazeera. It has made the smuggling business a long way off for criminal organizations, while migrants suffer the most.

“If I had money, I would go right now,” Sica said. “When they create more barriers, the cost goes up a lot. Now, it ‘s difficult, dangerous and expensive to move.”

Trafficking networks are growing

Prices have been rising for years, thanks to restrictions on immigration to the US and Mexico and the development of smuggling networks.

According to Carlos Lopez, head of relocation to Guatemala City, prices have risen sharply in the middle frustrated at this point the Trump administration. This was exacerbated by the closure of epidemic-related borders and travel restrictions.

“When officials enforce immigration laws, it is clear that the price of coyotes, or as they are called in Mexico, polleros, he climbed, “Lopez told Al Jazeera.

Although the COVID-19 ban began to fade, other obstacles persisted. “There is poverty, there is corruption, there is abandonment by the government, ”said Lopez. “As a result there is an emergency situation in which the epidemic has only increased and manifested itself.”

Things like this have caused some newcomers to come over US-Mexico borders from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The smugglers are taking advantage of the situation, said Eduardo Jimenez, a leader of the Quetzaltenango-based operations group, which aims to give Guatemalan people financial security.

“The goal of coyotes is to make more money,” Jimenez told Al Jazeera. “So they take advantage of the basic necessities of life for the people. And he knows that people will find a way to pay; foxes can raise the price as much as they want. “

The mafiaas fighting for Guatemala-Mexico border crossings have also increased the number of kidnappings, and if you do not pay, “you are at risk of being mercilessly killed,” Jimenez said.

Although migrant migrants were a way to prevent such violence, this approach has “become impossible” as Mexican authorities have worked hard. breaking travelers, Jessica Bolter, a researcher with the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, told Al Jazeera.

Globally, criminal organizations have earned about $ 5.5bn to $ 7bn from human trafficking in 2016, According to United Nations report. To cover such expenses, immigrants may take on huge debts or borrow money from relatives or friends who have already moved. Sometimes they approach aggressive lenders, who charge a 10 to 20 percent interest every month. Migrants often put the only valuable thing their family has as a pledge: their homes.

If they fail to pay their debts – which could happen if they are locked out of their travels, or deported before receiving enough money from the US – they and their families may be left with nothing.

‘Why did this happen to me?’

When Aracely Vail, 26, decided to move to the US, she received a loan from a relative of her husband, who moved seven years ago. She left her eight-year-old daughter in anticipation of reuniting with her husband in Maryland, and earning enough money to educate her daughter.

Coyotes have used the concept US President Joe BidenBorder policies are more flexible than former President Donald Trump encouraged people to move, and portray it as a definite trip with fewer risks.

Vail claimed that it was shown to him in this way, and he agreed to a human trafficker for 135,000 quetzales ($ 17,500). They agreed to pay 35,000 quetzales ($ 4,500) up front and the rest when they reached the border. “He told me the journey would be easy,” Vail told Al Jazeera. He told me many things, and this trip was not like that. It’s just a story they tell. ”

After traveling for more than 18 hours in the Mexican desert, Vail said he was abandoned by smugglers before crossing the US-Mexico border after their group was chased away by U.S. border agents. He was arrested and taken back to the small town of Guatemala.

“I asked God: ‘Why? Why did this happen to me? ‘”He said. “I just wanted to go because of poverty, because of the lack of opportunities here.”

Today, she lives in her small two-room house while her daughter plays with plastic dolls behind her back. When she speaks, she sews shiny jewelry on Indian clothing, and she explains that she earns little money from her work.

But the one who will repay the debt is her husband in the US: “You will not get that kind of money here.”