Mrs. Irma heard that people were running in the street and she managed to see a man who was walking “as if looking for a rifle.”
She went out to see what it was about and The first thing he noticed was that some unknown armed men were hitting his son, who was about 20 years old.
“They told my son that he had to go with them to fight, but my son told them that he didn’t want to, that he didn’t know anything about fighting with weapons, and they said ‘ah, well then We’re going to kill you, ‘”Irma told Real America News.
“ I approached them and told them why they beat him, that he didn’t know how to fight and that he wasn’t going to leave. Then they hit me with a butt and told me that they were going to kill me too, “explained Irma (not her real name).
The men tied her wrists behind her back so hard “I felt his arms were cut off.” They grabbed her by the hair and dragged her, Irma calculates that at least 200 meters, while they dragged her, there were pieces of her knees on the ground and her skin bleeding.
Her son, also tied behind his back, could still beg not to hit his mother, but they silenced him with blows of the butt to the face and on
Mrs. Irma, 41, was beaten to see how they tortured to his son. The least they did was burn the cable and they dropped drops of the melting plastic in her eyes.
They hit her so hard on the head that she lost consciousness and when she recovered it she did not I could see.
“Then I realized that I was in a hole that had water just above my ankles. There was like garbage and I was looking, until I found something in which I was carving the rope with which they had tied me, until I cut it, ”he recalled.
Irma said that for a while she begged God to help him get out of that hole because it was difficult for him with sore hands and damp walls.
When he got out, he calculated that he walked about two and a half hours, while he followed what seemed to him that it was a light. She thought it was the town of Aguililla, from where they had taken her.
She recovered her sight a little and as she approached the town she confirmed that she perceived street lights. On the way he called his other two children, a young man of 17 and a teenager of 14, who finally came out to find her.
Wounded, bleeding from her legs and still unable to see well, Irma left that same night with her youngest children from Aguililla, left with the concern and pain of her son who was also being tortured.
She traveled from the state of Michoacán to Tijuana, where she went to the sentry box from San Ysidro to ask the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors to please protect her, her injuries to her face and legs were visible.
“I was there at that time, because he had gone to leave some families who crossed into the United States, ”said a pastor, who runs a shelter with more than 300 people. “A CBP officer explained to Irma that she had to follow a protocol to request asylum, and that she could come with me to the shelter.”
The family is still there and has already submitted a petition to a legal organization to help her in her asylum case, but Irma is very fearful, because the same criminal organization that tortured her and disappeared her son is one of those that disputes the Tijuana square.
However, his case is far from unique, according to the pastor who runs the shelter.
“Now approximately 85 Percent of the people we have here are from Mexico, almost all from Michoacán, Guerrero and a few from Oaxaca ”, explained the pastor, who estimates that more than 40 percent of the migrants are Michoacan.
Regarding the viciousness with which the subjects hurt Irma and her eldest son, the pastor explained that many of the Michoacans and Guerrerenses in the shelter had to go through similar situations lares.
“It seems that this cartel needs men to take them to fight in combat and they take them away by force. Those who refuse to go, because they torture them, so that they are a lesson to others who do not want to go either “, reflected the pastor.
Thanks to the pastor, Irma has documented in complaints the injuries that are still visible Well, not even half a month has passed since she was tortured, but neither the shelter nor the single mother have the resources for a series of X-rays that would strengthen her request.
Religious and organizations of Michoacanos in California a few weeks ago built a humanitarian bridge between Aguililla and the sierra in that state and communities in the state of California.
According to organizers, Tijuana on average 1, 500 monthly families fleeing violence.
The coalition opened a care center for Michoacanos, where, with the support of the legal organization Al Otro Lado, they help them to fill out their asylum requests to the United States.
Meanwhile in the migrant camp at the El Chaparral border In Tijuana, there are now at least 2, 300 people and a local official, told Real America News that most of the new families that have arrived are from Michoacán.
“The families believe that if they get there it will help them to request asylum, they have not understood that the applications are made online,” said the director of the Migrant Assistance office of the municipality of Tijuana, José Luis Pérez Canchola.
However, he recognized that Michoacan families arrive at the place every day after fleeing the violence.