Breaking: Deportation of Future Catholic Priest Delayed
When Manuel Guerra Casas set out on the smugglers' trail towards the U.S. from Mexico, he did so as a refugee. He was fleeing vicious gangs who demanded his participation or his life. He was fleeing hunger and poverty. He embarked on an epic adventure that could easily have cost him his life.
Manuel Casas is from a family of 12 children. There was not much work for his father in Guanajuato, Mexico. There were many nights when he went to bed hungry. By age 16, Casas was fighting for his place in a world with very few options. Mexican gangs were pushing him to participate. Manuel didn’t like the violence or the bad acts Mexican toughs use to prey on the helpless poor. Yet, the gangs adopt territories. You join or you die.
You don’t say, “Hey I am out of the gang!” Casas told Immigrants2bfree in an exclusive interview Sunday. During the past ten years, Casas has kept his distance from the gangs that wished to lead him down a dead end street in a country with few options for the poor.
The route Manuel Guerra Casas took to cross the border is the same trip that took over 250 lives last year. The terrain is so barren not even poor Mexicans claim it for ranching or farming. Though few people live there, plenty of men, women and children collapse on the rocky desert floor. Without water and food, often lost, life slips from them. Others are robbed by bandits and stripped naked. Like the Jews escaping Nazi Germany, immigrants often sew valuables into their garments, even their underwear, for those fortunate enough to wear such an expensive item. Sometimes they violate the little girls before leaving.
There might be some black humor at the thought of immigrants streaking across the border in the buff, until you realize without clothes there is no defense against the blazing sun and freezing nights. It can be a death sentence. One Coyote finally got caught killing the travelers who had paid him for safe passage across “La frontera”. It was easier to shoot them. Years later, grieving mothers learned the fate their children suffered when the remains were found in a remote killing field. These are some of the dangers Casas faced when he fled Guanajuato, deep inside Mexico.
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