Haitian Immigrants in New York Describe Perilous Escape

Planning for the trip, I needed a minimum of $3,000 for each person. I must pay for buses, boat, guide to cross the forest, and I have to pay police and military, who I describe as legal thieves. It was exaggerated in Bolivia, where the police had to fight with us to check our pockets and bags and took everything they wanted.

Arriving in Colombia was the beginning of the hell, where you have to buy a machete, oil against snakes, a tent, serum for rehydration and food before starting to cross the forest. I was exposed to all kinds of danger. Some people had worse experiences than me, like men watching thieves rape their wives. I was lucky a bit because the people we paid to guide us had weapons to secure us.

Dealing with all these bad experiences and then arriving in Texas to face deportation is worse than death.

Since the first day in the forest, I thought that I should not be on this trip, which is like going to face the devil with no expectation of what could happen to you. Every day, I walked from 6 a.m. .to 6 p.m. Then we set up our tent to sleep. I was in a group of 13 Haitians; later it became more than 2,000 people.

I walked up a mountain for six hours with my heavy backpack and my wife, Elide, who was two months pregnant, under heavy rain, and the road was muddy. But I was focused on the destination, even though we were suffering.

The worst experience for me was arriving under the bridge at the border with the caravan of thousands of people in the dust under the sun. I had to cross the river to buy food because my wife was starving, and I took the risk to cross to the side of Mexico to buy food, and the water was under my neck, and I don’t know how to swim.