Like an amulet, Daniel Alfonso Molina got a tattoo before embarking on one of those journeys where it is known where it begins and where, when and how it will end is unknown.
Not even the certainty of surviving. “Of course you see people die!” she exclaims. "He is mental, he who is weak-minded does not overcome it," he maintains.
"My journey has lasted two months and four days," he explains. She left Venezuela, from Maracaibo, on June 16. On August 20, she crossed the Rio Grande on foot and fell into the hands of the migra in Texas, which was his goal to seek asylum in the United States. On Wednesday the 24th she arrives in New York.
Gone are the terrible stages: poisonous snakes, thieves (they left him naked, like others), guerrillas, drug traffickers, corrupt soldiers and policemen, kidnappings, fear, fatigue, illnesses, hunger.
Prior to his departure, “choose” was written on his right arm and “choose to leave” on the left, with good calligraphy.
“They are the same word, but that space of separation influences a lot”, he comments. "I chose myself and I left," she adds.
Molina, 28, is now about to board one of those cinematic yellow school buses. From a hostel on East 30th Street in Manhattan, described as hell, he is transferred to a quieter one in Brooklyn.
At this time of the afternoon he is a happy man, with a face as smiling as the Pokémon image on his T-shirt.
Just a while ago he got off another bus, in which he spent two full days "locked up", day and night. He left Texas on Monday, with about fifty companions, and 48 hours later he hears the reception committee – made up of, among others, Manuel Castro, immigration commissioner of the Big Apple, and Mark Levine, president of the district of Manhattan – repeatedly tell him: "Welcome to New York."
The cold of “the fridge”, as they call the place where Texas border agents process their data, is transformed into heat. They shake their hands, provide them with food, clothing, a telephone and look for accommodation for them until, as asylum seekers, they can find employment.
At the end of his route – "in my country you cannot continue, the crisis is total" – Molina goes on to enter the statistics of immigrants who have become "pawns", according to Castro's qualification, of the Republican's strategy Greg Abbott, the Texan governor who is seeking re-election in November.
Abbott is one of the champions in opposition to the Joe Biden Administration in its immigration policy. So since May he began chartering buses (two drivers and two “custodians”) to send undocumented immigrants (everything is taken from them, including their passport) to liberal cities.
"New York is the ideal destination for these immigrants, who can receive the abundance of services and housing that Mayor Eric Adams has boasted as a sanctuary city," said the governor.
In climbing. This is the Port Authority station, a stone's throw from Times Square. Perhaps the most touristic global enclave of which the 237 who arrive this Wednesday, in five vehicles, do not seem to have clues. That number of travelers represents the record number of people received in a single day since the Abbot challenge began.
The vast majority flee Venezuela and young men predominate. There is another record. A married couple with three children are transferred to a hospital. Her three-month-old baby, the youngest received to date, is ill.
"No one is going to be left without a bed, without food, without medical attention and the children will have a place in school when the course begins," says Levine. But the city begins to suffer the consequences, with an increase in homelessness and shelters unable to meet the demand.
The City Council is trying to add 14 hotels, while claiming federal financial aid.
"What the governor does disgusts me, he has not a spark of sympathy for these human beings who escape persecution and come to work," Levine stresses. "That's why the Statue of Liberty is in New York and not Texas," he adds.
Molina, who wanted to go to Florida, and others confirm what Castro denounces, that those affected are not allowed to choose their destination. Once here, however, these fleeing misery, violence and tyranny care little for political strife.
Venezuelans Randy Mérida, 28, and Carolina Carrizales, 19, preferred Orlando because they have friends there and because of "the Latin language." But they got the bus for free. They would have gone anywhere.
Although they maintain the idea of settling in the city of Florida (“as soon as we earn money”), their first concern, once in New York, is to meet in the same shelter. They were separated by not being officially married. You get it. They are relocated to a shelter in the Bronx. Mérida, who lost 26 kilos in weight during the two-month adventure, is worried about a personal matter. "We are together, but I need a job, the food is not good and it is little."
Luis Parra, who has made the journey (month and a half) with his friend Irwin Silva, acknowledges knowing that there is a conflict with Texas. "We can't talk either because we don't know how things are here," he replies.
Parra, 27, and Silva, 23, are also Venezuelan. Along with the Panamanian jungle of Darien (they witnessed the death of a Haitian woman and her daughter), they point out that the transit through Guatemala and Mexico is the worst, an issue on which the dozen interviewees agree.
The two, being university students, worked for the local or provincial power. "We didn't even pick up our things, we feared for our existence," says Parra. “I cried and laughed – he confesses – upon entering the United States. Everything had been left behind. I don't want to drag anything I've experienced along the way. I don't recommend it even to the meanest person."
Two days after meeting him, Molina sends a WhatsApp: "Brooklyn seems curious to me, here everyone lives in their own world." And she adds: "I need to work, do you know something?". This is the beginning of another journey. She hasn't seen the Statue of Liberty yet.
