TAUNTON — Sporadic shrieks and pattering footsteps of playing children echo in the hotel hallway. Melanie Armijos, 19, holds her 3-month-old baby. The curtains are drawn to keep the blinding snow glare from their fourth-floor room. Today was the first time she and her family, from Ecuador and Venezuela, have ever seen snow.
She had one word for it: bonita. Pretty.
In October, Melanie gave birth to her daughter, Ivanna, at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford. Just weeks prior, with Ivanna almost fully grown in her belly, Melanie had made the arduous weekslong journey, with a toddler in tow, more than 4,000 miles from Caracas, Venezuela, through Central America and into the United States.
Today, Melanie’s family is one of about 3,545 families who are migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers housed in emergency shelters across the state. They lived at a hotel in Dartmouth for several weeks, with Melanie’s partner, Randy Eduardo Ramirez Rivas, working odd jobs on construction sites, and Randy’s teenage sister taking a bus to Dartmouth High School each day.
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But last month, the state relocated them and several other families to a hotel in Taunton as part of a statewide effort to consolidate shelters. Their new space is a bit roomier and even has a kitchen where Melanie can prepare arroz con pollo and carne. But mentally, the change has been difficult, as she and her family look for work and try to set roots in a new country.
Dartmouth, December
A light-up unicorn toy, packages of diapers, deflated pink balloons, sunglasses, and a can of Doritos are among the miscellany scattered in the hotel room Melanie shares with her partner, Randy, and her two children in Dartmouth.
Melanie breastfeeds Ivanna. In the bed next to her, her 2-year-old daughter, Zhaira, takes an afternoon nap.
“Overall I feel good, but my daughter is a little bit sick,” Melanie says in Spanish, as she looks over at Zhaira, who breathes through a cold.
Melanie was born and raised in Guayaquil, Ecuador, a port city that has been a hotbed of gang violence and drug smuggling. Earlier this month in her home country, masked gunmen broke into a TV news station and held a host at gunpoint. More than 100 prison guards are being held hostage.
After her parents separated, she lived with her mother and her stepfather. At 14, she stopped going to school and began working as an aesthetician.
Around that time, she had her first child, Liam, who is now 4 years old and still living in Ecuador with Melanie’s family. She hopes to get him to the United States.
Melanie said her initial plan was to get out of Ecuador and set roots in Central America with Randy, who is a Venezuelan national but was living in Ecuador. However, when Melanie, Randy, and his family realized how close they had gotten to the border, she said, they decided to continue to the United States.
When they reached the United States in September, Randy and his family joined a record number of migrants coming from Venezuela through the southern border that month. Federal data shows the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol encountered more than 65,000 Venezuelan citizens last September. Ecuadorians were much lower, at about 15,000 that month.
“When I think back to the trip we made, I feel a sense of anguish,” said Melanie. “It was scary.”
In June, Melanie and Randy sold their washing machine and refrigerator to raise money for their journey to Caracas, Venezuela, where they would join Randy’s family. From there, their journey began.
The Darién Gap, June
The Darién Gap, a 60-mile-wide strip of jungle, swamps, and mountains connecting Colombia to Panama, is one of the world’s most dangerous and deadly migratory routes. No roads cross it, and it’s the only way to get from South America to the United States on foot.
Melanie and Randy’s family crossed the Darién Gap in groups in June. She and Randy’s sister, Graciela Ramirez Rivas, only went part of the way, getting airlifted, she said, by helicopter somewhere in Panama. Randy and his father, Eduardo Ramirez Rivas, traveled the entire route on foot.
Last year, more than 500,000 migrants crossed the path, the New York Times reported. The jungle’s dense vegetation is dotted with blue markers made of plastic or fabric to help migrants find their way through, said Randy.
Eduardo remembers the river they crossed in the Darién Gap as never-ending. In some stretches, the water barely reached the ankles, while in others, it was so high that the group of over 100 migrants formed human chains to avoid being swept away by the current, he said.
“If anyone lost control or panicked, they would be swept away by the current and drowned,” said Eduardo.
“Everything is stuck in my mind,” said Randy, Melanie’s partner. Walking in the river with the water at his throat and his arms clinging to his father, Randy felt his backpack suddenly become heavy. He recalled getting pulled down by it, and letting go of it so he could make it through.
Aside from the risk of drowning presented by the rivers, the treacherous, dayslong journey put migrants at risk of hypothermia. Food is also scarce.
“We walked looking at dead people along the way,” said Eduardo. “We knew it would be a difficult journey, but not like this. We just couldn’t stop.”
Their peril in the Darién Gap escalated when armed men positioned themselves at the front and rear of the group, Eduardo said. Migrants often encounter assault, murder, robberies and rape while crossing, with a Colombian drug cartel controlling much of the route up to the Panamanian border.
“They were yelling, ‘Everybody down! Everybody down!’” Eduardo said, imitating guns with his hands and fingers. “They began shooting into the air to scare us. We started to panic.”
The gunmen demanded that all migrants pay $100 each, Eduardo explained. After everyone had given their “fee,” some using their entire savings for the trip, they continued on their way.
Panama to Texas, June to September
After making it through the Darién Gap, Randy and Eduardo reunited with Melanie and Graciela in Panama. They ran out of savings just before entering Costa Rica, but managed to scrape together enough for food. Finding a place to sleep proved more difficult.
“Everywhere we were asked to pay,” Eduardo said. “We slept a few blocks away from the shelter, in some tents we found, just to keep us warm.”
To earn money, Melanie, Randy, Eduardo, and Graciela sold caramels and bread. In a few weeks, they saved enough to continue from Costa Rica to Nicaragua. From there, they reached El Salvador, Honduras, and then Guatemala.
Crossing Central America took a significant toll on the family. Eduardo lost so much weight that he fashioned a metal wire into a belt to keep his pants fastened around his shrinking waist. Zhaira, Melanie’s 2-year-old daughter, became little more than bones and skin, with a disproportionately large head, Eduardo recalls.
After working for nearly a month at a construction company in Guatemala — Eduardo and Randy as carpenters, and Melanie as a cook — the family decided to try crossing the United States border, they said.
To reach Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, the family jumped on what migrants call “La Bestia,” or “the beast” — a slow-moving cargo train that heads north.
“The train doesn’t stop,” says Eduardo, showing a video on his cellphone, one of many exchanged between migrants. “If you fall, you get run over by the wagons. Even if you lie on the tracks and stay still, you’ll get hit by the hooks and dragged away.”
The journey lasted several days and involved four train changes, Melanie said.
When they arrived at the border in September, Melanie, eight months pregnant and holding Zhaira, along with the rest of the family and several other migrants, quickly lifted the first fence and ran as fast as they could, she said.
They then jumped the second fence and reached U.S. soil, where border agents greeted them.
After two nights at an immigration center in Texas, where she received a thermal blanket and a frozen burrito that she described as “astronaut food,” Melanie obtained permission from Homeland Security officials to leave with her daughter and go to an immigration center in Denver, she said. From there, she went to New Jersey and Boston before reuniting with her family in October at the emergency shelter in Dartmouth.
Dartmouth, December
At 7 a.m. every weekday, the school bus would pull up to the Baymont by Wyndham Hotel in Dartmouth. Graciela would carry her backpack with the heavy algebra book, homework translated into Spanish, and a computer she had just learned to log into.
In a few months, she is set to graduate high school.
“The truth is, at first it was a little complicated, because there are a few Latinos there and only a few speak Spanish,” said Graciela, who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. “But I do have many friends now.”
She said her first American high school experience was like what she has seen in the movies.
At the beginning, Eduardo, her father, had to push her to go to school.
“She was a little scared of being bullied,” Eduardo said. “I am proud of my daughter… Things are turning out as we hoped they would.”
When she returns from school, Graciela usually helps look after her nieces. But she’s not so different from the average American teenager, splitting her time between homework, scrolling on TikTok, and taking many selfies — some with her baby niece beside her.
“They just want safety, to help. Have a peaceful life … and help our people — sons, grandchildren,” said Eduardo, looking at his family. “I already lived my life. I just want to make sure my family gets a better life.”
Graciela said she was a bit sad to leave school at Dartmouth. However, at her new school, Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School, she is adjusting much faster.
“I already have friends, and there are several people who speak Spanish, which makes me feel a little more comfortable,” she said.
Taunton, January
Melanie says she misses Ecuador. Part of her wants to return to South America, as does Randy. But they describe it as a longing for home and family — not a desire to return to the conditions that made them leave: violence and a lack of jobs.
Randy describes the Venezuelan government as a dictatorship. “When people start protesting … throwing rocks … The government responds with bullets and weapons.”
The parents split their time between their room and Eduardo’s room at the other end of the hallway.
Randy says he is bored. In Dartmouth he worked, but here he says he doesn’t have transportation or connections for work, and doesn’t interact much with people outside of his family.
Their outings consist of walking to the nearby Walmart for groceries. Overwhelmed by the size of the store and its huge inventory, Randy said he relies on his phone’s translator to ask clerks where items are.
In their room, a framed multicolor map of Massachusetts hangs over the couch. Though they managed to navigate through unknown cities and an unforgiving jungle — sometimes without cell phones or maps — to find the United States, neither Randy nor Melanie could point to Taunton, where they and their family now sit.
Antonio Beltrán contributed to this article as a Spanish-English interpreter.
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org, Anastasia E. Lennon at alennon@newbedfordlight.org.
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These “Illegal Immigrants” aren’t fleeing a horrible place in central America, they’re simply crossing American borders illegally for free housing, food, education, welfare, food stamps, and medical, and the federal & state tax payers are forced to support these rotten people who are the new cancer in American society, and they’ll ruin your cities, towns, and states with zero control or say for the tax payers, it’s disgusting and sickening anready!!!!
I don’t believe that most of the these people have legitimate asylum claims. They are mostly economic migrants and they shouldn’t be protected and supported because in doing so you are encouraging others to come.
Firstly, we should make it legal for schools to ask about immigration status and not allow those here illegally to attend schools funded by public money. Its horrible that my property taxes go to educate these people when our districts are so underfunded and when they bring so many issues with them. Not to mention that they strain the system by needing ELL classes. Put American kids first, no more illegal migrants in our schools!
The gray areas within this story are plenty! It does establish that the parties are ‘illegal’! Yet, the rambling romantic narrative seems to want warming to it! Is it possible your fish house, restaurant, landscaping or any business needs workers that will operate below minimum wage and without benefits? Then let taxpayers subsidize them while they work cheaply for you! Businesses that hire illegals need to be responsible! Ancestors emmigrated legally, with sponsors. Times have changed through abuses.
E-Verify should be put in place for every worker, every job regardless of the occupation, whether it’s full time, part time, seasonal, or otherwise, if you’re not in America legally, workers don’t get jobs, employers don’t hire workers, and the tax payers don’t get robbed by illegal immigrants gaming the system. I can’t wait for Trump to be elected President so he can deport every one of the illegal immigrants in our city, state, and nation.
If people want to emigrate to America, they can apply and go through the process like everyone else in the world, and they must have a sponsor to pay for their medical, legal, and living expenses until they can support themselves, no more welfare, no free education, medical, food, clothing, housing, etc., it’s bad enough the welfare class is growing within America, we don’t need or want the third world populations stealing from the tax payers as well. The federal debt is $34 TRILLION and growing daily, the last thing we need is more illegal immigrants who can’t read, write, or speak English, they can’t even get a job to support themselves, but they all have more children than the average American, that makes a lot of sense huh? 0 sympathy here, or from any other overtaxed American!!!
I guess I’m supposed to have sympathy for an unwed mother of two who came to America just in time to have her second child, now a citizen? I don’t. These supposed poor huddled masses seeking a better life play the game better than the United States government ever could. They know their “rights” and what they’re “entitled” to under our current bastardized system. The taxpayers bear the burden and it shows no end in sight. They willfully and knowingly crossed illegally into the United States and have been given everything they they could ever want. They could have stopped at any point on their route as asylum laws demand but instead violated the law and want more family members to follow. This needs to end. Maura Healy can cry all she wants, but she should be crying over what she is doing to Massachusetts, it’s citizens and the country.