Border accident: father mourns his killed daughter in an SUV

Yesenia Magali Melurez Cardona told her father that she wanted to follow in his footsteps.

He had traveled from Guatemala to the United States 15 years earlier in search of a new life. In February, she quit her job and her studies and headed north.

Chiquimulilla, the town where she spent her 23 years, had been ravaged by the pandemic. Unemployment was on the rise. The population was desperate. The streets were too dangerous to walk at night.

On Tuesday, Yesenia found herself in a situation just as perilous as the one she had fled.

A brown Ford Expedition carried a suspected smuggler and 24 people rushing to what they hoped was safety. Yesenia and her mother, Verlyn Cardona, were trapped in their backs when she breached the fence separating Mexico from California.

It was wide by a semi-trailer carrying two empty trailers. He stopped, the windshield broke at the intersection of Route 115 and Norrish Road.

Seventeen passengers were thrown from the SUV. When Verlyn regained consciousness in the back of the crumpled vehicle, her daughter was lying on her legs.

Dead.

“The American dream did not come true”, said Yesenia’s father, Maynor Melérez. She couldn’t 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 for a better life and the false promise, fueled by rumors, that now, under a new US administration, was the time to reach it.

Instead, 13 of the 25 occupants of the car were killed. Families have been broken up. At least 10 of the dead were Mexican nationals. At least four women in the car in the accident were Guatemalan; two of them died.

Lies grew increasingly in Guatemala, claiming that with a new president and new policies, the doors were open to anyone who could enter the United States, said Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemalan consul general in Los Angeles. In reality, he says, “politics haven’t changed much.”

“The migrants come on a journey that is sold to them like 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 possibility of him being kidnapped, the possibility of leaving him to die in the desert. “These are decisions you make, where you ask yourself, ‘Am I dying over there? Or do I die fighting for a dream? “

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

Yesenia was in her fourth year at the University of San Carlos – where she was studying to become a lawyer – when she and her mother decided to leave. The young woman was harassed and threatened, according to her uncle.

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

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

Yesenia was in one of two vehicles that would be caught on surveillance footage going through a breach in the border fence near the Gordon’s Well exit of Interstate 8 in the hours leading up to dawn Tuesday.

Normally, the 1997 expedition would contain seven or eight people. But this one only had two seats, one for the driver, one for a front passenger. When it collided with the empty semi-trailer at 6:15 a.m., 23 other men and women were stranded in the rear.

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

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

Eight people were still in the SUV when first responders arrived. Six were dead, the other two taken to hospital.

Verlyn suffered a severe blow to the head that caused a brain hemorrhage. She has since been released from the hospital.

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

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

The second vehicle seen crossing the border, a Chevy Suburban, was found in flames, its 19 occupants found hiding in nearby brush and detained by border patrol officers.

Paniagua, the Guatemalan consul general, expressed concern about the increased risks migrants take to come to the United States, encouraged by smugglers who he says distorts the situation at the border.

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

“They don’t know if they’re going to get in a semi-trailer, if they’re going to hide in the false bottom of a bus, if they’re going to hide in a truck with 25 people like what happened. here, ”said Paniagua. “We are seeing the lives lost.”

At the start of the pandemic – with borders closed in Central America, fear of the virus and Trump’s tough immigration policies – there appeared to be a drop in the number of migrants to the north, said Tiziano Breda, an analyst based in the United States. Guatemala for the International Crisis Group.

But as the pandemic dragged on – and people felt the economic fallout – it started pushing people back into the United States.

“Unfortunately, accidents like these might not be the only ones,” Breda said.

Family members described Yesenia as friendly and loving. She was like an older sister to Dominguez’s daughter, who was six years younger. She loved to play football and had such an impact on its residents that they hold tributes before her body was returned, Dominguez said.

The last time Melérez saw and hugged her daughter, she was 6 years old. Despite being in another country, he said, the two have remained in close contact.

Last year, Yesenia told her that she wanted to come to the United States. He told him how difficult it would be to get in and asked him to wait until he found a way. He didn’t know that she and her mother were coming.

Melérez, who lives in New York, learned of the Dominguez crash.

“There are no words,” said Melérez, who arrived in California on Wednesday night. “I couldn’t see her again, I couldn’t hug her.