Edgartown, Massachusetts
CNN
–
After saying hello and goodbye to the nearly 50 immigrants who suddenly arrived by plane on this rich vacation island, volunteers at the Episcopal church carried tables and chairs, food by truckloads. and portable folding beds.
A familiar silence descended Friday afternoon on the tree-lined neighborhood of Martha’s Vineyard, where Jackie Stallings, 56, couldn’t stop thinking about the young Venezuelan boy — she was 23 but looked 15 — who sat in St. Andrew’s Parish House the night before.
Asylum seekers released cellphone video of Stallings during his trip through a remote jungle in Central America, pointing to migrants who died along the way.
“It looks like she’s showing me videos of cats but it was actually their journey and what they endured to get here,” said Stallings, a member of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. “There were dead bodies and mothers with children trying to cross mud-like mud.”
“The sad part is seeing these beautiful young women,” said her husband, Larkin Stallings, 66, an Oak Bluffs bar owner who sits on the nonprofit’s board. “For them, they just turn it over and show you a picture.”
“It was like, look, this is dead, part of their original party. And he’s dead and this is dead. Clay is like them up here,” she said Friday in the shade of the church’s porch, pointing. her thighs. “And you see them, they actually have to lift their feet from the mud. They die because they’re stuck.”
During their whirlwind 44-hour visit this week, migrants like the young Venezuelan woman left an indelible mark on the accidental hosts of the isolated site, known as a summer retreat for former US presidents. celebrities and billionaires.
The guests, including small children, boarded the bus on Friday morning from the corner of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
Days of uncertainty on the small island off the coast of Massachusetts and a massive effort by locals to do something for them ended with a new odyssey – a boat ride and then another bus ride home. temporary at Joint Base Cape Cod.
Asylum seekers – most of them from Venezuela – were flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday under arrangements made by Florida’s governor. because of the failure of the federal government to secure the southern border.
Martha’s Vineyard didn’t expect them, but a small army of activists has rallied to help people join the controversial debate over America’s broken immigration system.
DeSantis’ move has been sharply condemned by the White House, Democratic officials and immigration lawyers who have vowed to take legal action on the grounds that, they say, immigrants have been lured north with promises of jobs, housing and help with immigration papers. eventually misled to their final destination.
The governor of Florida denied that the migrants did not know where they were going. He said they signed a waiver and were given a packet containing a map of Martha’s Vineyard. “It’s clear that’s where they were going,” he said, adding that the move was voluntary.
Lisa Belcastro, the winter shelter coordinator for the non-profit organization Harbor Homes, was close to tears an hour after the migrants left the island on Friday, as volunteers began to clean the church house and the church hall where the newcomers slept.
“I want them to have a good life,” she said. “I want their journey and hardships to be worth it for them and their families. I want them to come to America and be welcomed. They all want to work. And I just want their journey to end happily.” .”
On Thursday night, a group of young migrant men gathered on the narrow street outside the church, just a short walk from the glitzy upscale shops, restaurants and art galleries of Edgartown’s Main Street. One asylum seeker, aged in his 20s, ventured out onto the road to explore once. He asked the price of a hamburger at a fancy restaurant. When told it was $26, he noted that it was more than what he earned a month in Venezuela when he could get a job.
In the front window of the church building, young children could be seen in the playroom filled with books and stuffed animals.
Juan Ramirez, 24, but looking younger, stood outside the 123-year-old church hall – where 18 of the men slept on portable beds and inflatable mattresses under blankets. A donation of two nights. He teared up as he recounted the family he left behind in Táchira state in western Venezuela when he set off in late July with his phone and $400 in cash.
“My friends thought I was crazy for leaving, that I would never do it. I just want a better future for my family,” he said of his parents, grandparents and his favorite cousin at home. “I try but it’s hard don’t think about them.”
The cash was long gone and his phone was stolen when Ramirez reached northern Mexico and the U.S. border, he said.
Ramirez and other immigrants said they were released by U.S. immigration officials with orders to return for a hearing. In San Antonio, a woman was contacted and offered a plane ride to a shelter in the Northeast where there would be housing, jobs and help with immigration papers. The immigrants were placed in a hotel and about 50 of them were put on the flight to Massachusetts.
“When we landed, no one was waiting for us,” he said. “No one knew we were coming. We found out they lied to us. But, thankfully, we came with kind people who supported us with everything we needed.
Pedro Luis Torrealba, 37, said he and his wife left the Venezuelan capital of Caracas in mid-July. Their two children – aged 6 and 11 – stayed with relatives.
The couple started crossing the border between Colombia and Panama – the deadly Darien Gap – with more than 60 other migrants, Torrealba said outside the church on Thursday night. Only 22 completed the 60-mile trek through the forest and steep mountains, he said. Some fell off rocks, some were swept away by floodwaters.
The deaths come at a time when large numbers of undocumented immigrants are overflowing the US-Mexico border and dying trying to cross.
In Mexico, Torrealba said the couple and other migrants were briefly kidnapped by members of the Zetas Cartel, a violent drug-trafficking organization. When he told them he could not pay the ransom to allow them to continue, he said, a member of the cartel used a tool to remove the two gold teeth.
They finally did in the US-Mexico earlier this month. In San Antonio, they met a woman who offered them a free flight to a place they had never heard of, along with the promise of immigration assistance, housing and employment. Torrealba did not receive treatment for his mouth and jaw injuries until they arrived on Martha’s Vineyard.
Another Venezuelan, David Bautista, 26, said he left San Cristóbal, the capital city of Táchira state, in late July. More than a month later he crossed the Rio Grande to Eagle Pass, Texas, from the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras. He said he was released by US immigration officials after 11 days of detention. They gave him immigration hearing papers in Washington, DC.
At an immigrant shelter in San Antonio, he was given a free flight and the benefits that supposedly came with it — including help changing the date and location of the immigration hearing.
“I can’t tell you more because I don’t know more,” he said. “We are all lost. We are all in this together. We know this is an island in the United States.”
Standing next to Bautista, a 52-year-old man named Osmar Cabral, who said he was from Portugal and had lived on Martha’s Vineyard for four months, handed the immigrant a folded $100 bill.
“I never met him,” Cabral said. “But I came here with a friend because I wanted to help. We are all brothers.”
His friend, Franklin Pierre, a native of Venezuela who has lived on Martha’s Vineyard since 2015 and works for a party rental company, was there to talk to some of the migrants and give them advice.
“You have to show up for your immigration hearing or you’re going to be deported,” Pierre told Bautista and other young men gathered around him. “You come here after the busy summer season and work is hard to come by. The winter is very cold, sometimes 10 degrees below zero. Imagine not having a job.
On Thursday night, a group of lawyers who interviewed the migrants told the press outside the church that they are investigating legal action, claiming that the legal process and civil rights of the migrants have been violated.
“This is a violation of human rights. This is a constitutional violation,” Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Boston Civil Rights Lawyers, said as volunteers and other supporters applauded. “We will hold the states and criminals accountable according to the law. This has not happened. without an answer.”
Some of the passers-by recorded their video on their mobile phones.
Rachel Self, an immigration attorney in Boston, also drew applause.
“We’ve got their backs, and they’re not alone. To that end, I’d like to especially thank Trader Fred for donating underwear, because Martha’s Vineyard doesn’t have a Walmart down the street,” she said, referring to immigrants and a local shopkeeper. who went up to help.
A bystander accidentally dropped a bag of chocolates.
“I brought candy,” said Matt Frederick, 54, a local who works as a waiter and taxi driver and lives out of his car. He used to hand out bags of sweets to the migrants who were passing by. He said he paid $100 for the dessert.
“I feel sorry,” he said, adding that he lives in his car because he refuses to pay the expensive rent on the island. “There are a lot of people here who are struggling to get by. It’s not all rich people.”
On Friday, after the migrants left Martha’s Vineyard, a volunteer from the non-profit Harbor Homes, Sean O’Sullivan, dismantled the folding beds that the 18 male migrants had been sleeping on. the church hall.
“The year-round community is very strong because you’re an isolated person here – whether it’s the boat or bad weather, you’re stuck here,” he said. “We learned to help each other. We are used to dealing with people in need, and we are very happy – as they have enriched us, we are happy to help them on their journey. “
In the empty church building hours after the migrants left, Charles Rus, the church’s organist and music director, said the place felt lonely.
“The governor of Florida was wrong,” he said. “I think he thought we didn’t know what to do. And actually the people here really care. They really care.”
Jackie Stallings said she hopes to visit the migrants at the Cape Cod station, which is a temporary settlement.
