Border accident: Father mourns daughter killed in SUV

Yesenia Magali Melendrez Cardona told her father she wants to follow in his footsteps.

He had undertaken the journey from Guatemala to the United States 15 years before in search of a new life. In February, she left a job and left her studies behind and is heading north.

Chiquimulilla, the city where she spent 23 years, was plagued by the pandemic. Unemployment is rising. The population was desperate. The streets were too dangerous to walk at night.

Yesenia finds herself on Tuesday in a situation that is just as dangerous as the situation she fled from.

A chestnut-brown Ford Expedition had a suspected smuggler and 24 people in the direction of safety. Yesenia and her mother, Verlyn Cardona, were pinned to the back as they drove through an offense in the fence that separates Mexico from California.

It was next to the side of a semi-trailer two empty trailers. It came to a halt, the windshield broke at the intersection of Highway 115 and Norrish Road.

Seventeen passengers were put out of the SUV. When Verlyn regained consciousness in the back of the crumpled vehicle, her daughter was spread over her legs.

Death.

“The American sue is not the partner,” says Yesenia’s father, Maynor Melendrez. She could not achieve the American dream.

Although the occupants of the car came from different cities and countries – from Guatemala to Mexico – they were united by the hope of a better life and the false promise, fueled by rumors, that now was the time to get to It.

Instead, 13 of the 25 occupants in the car died. Families were crushed. At least ten of the deceased were Mexican citizens. At least four women in the car when it collided were Guatemalan; two of them died.

Falsehoods are increasingly spreading in Guatemala, claiming that with a new president and new policies, the doors were open for anyone to move to the US, said Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s Consul General in Los Angeles. In fact, he said, “politics has not changed much.”

“Migrants come on a journey that is sold to them as an American dream,” Paniagua said. “But in reality it’s an uncertain journey.”

Yesenia’s uncle, Rudy Dominguez, first fled Guatemala 16 years ago.

Before the trip, he said, he thought about the risks: the chance that he would be abducted, the possibility that he would die in the desert. “These are decisions you make, where you ask yourself, ‘Am I dying there? Or am I dying to fight for a dream? ‘”

When the pandemic hit, Dominguez said, the economy collapsed. There was no work. Some people have turned to theft and drug trafficking.

Yesenia was in her fourth year at the University of San Carlos – where she’s studying law – when she and her mother decided to leave. According to her uncle, the young woman is being harassed and threatened.

“It was an emergency decision,” Dominguez said. “There they threaten and kill you.”

Their journey began on February 2 and led them to Baja California, Mexico, where they stayed for about a week before boarding the Ford Expedition.

Yesenia was in one of the two vehicles that were to be caught during footage of a violation in the boundary fence near the Gordon’s Well exit of Interstate 8 Tuesday.

Normally the expedition in 1997 would contain seven or eight people. But this one had only two seats, one for the driver, one for the front passenger. When it collided with the empty tractor trailer at 06:15, 23 other men and women were pinned in the back.

“Having 25 people in that SUV is unimaginable,” Dominguez said. “It’s inhuman.”

David Kyle, a professor of sociology at UC Davis and an expert on human trafficking, said: “It must have been hell in that SUV even before the crash.”

Eight people were still in the SUV when the first reaction arrived. Six were killed, the other two were taken to a hospital.

Verlyn suffered a severe blow to her head that caused a cerebral hemorrhage. She has since been discharged from the hospital.

The 46-year-old does not remember the accident. Only wakes up and sees her daughter dead.

“She always tried to give her daughter a better life,” Dominguez said. “Never thought the price she would pay would be that.”

The second vehicle seen across the border, a Chevy Suburban, was found engulfed in flames. The 19 occupants hid in the nearby brush and were detained by border patrol agents.

Guatemala’s consul general Paniagua said he was concerned about the increased risks migrants were taking to the US, encouraged by smugglers who he said misrepresented the situation at the border.

The goal of Guatemalan officials, he said, “is to inform people about the reality that is happening at the border so that they can make the best decisions for their health and their lives.”

“They do not know if they are going to go in a tractor trailer, or if they are going to hide under the false bottom of a bus, or if they are going to hide with 25 people in a truck like what happened here,” said Paniagua. said. “We see lives lost.”

At the outset of the pandemic – with closed borders in Central America, fears of the virus and Trump’s harsh immigration policies – it appears that those migrating north are declining, said Tiziano Breda, an analyst at the International Crisis Group in Guatemala. said.

But as the pandemic continued – and people suffered the economic downturn – it began pushing people back to the US.

“Unfortunately, accidents like this will not be the only ones,” Breda said.

Family members described Yesenia as friendly and loving. She was like a big sister to Dominguez’s daughter, who was six years younger. She loved playing football and had such a huge impact on her residents that they arrange tributes before her body is sent back, Dominguez said.

The last time Melendrez saw and embraced his daughter was she 6. Although he was in another country, he said, the two remain in close contact.

Last year, Yesenia told him she wanted to come to the US. He told her how hard it would be to get in and asked her to wait until he found a way. He did not know that she and her mother would come.

Melendrez, who lives in New York, heard the news of the accident at Dominguez.

“There are no words,” said Melendrez, who arrived in California on Wednesday night. “I could not see her again, and could not embrace her.”