Andrew KimmelVerified account

My contact said we couldn’t get caught taking someone by the facility or we wouldn’t be allowed back to. So we quickly drove around the block to get in front of the Cuban woman again. By the time we made it around, the woman was gone. She was kidnapped right in front of us.

There are two different kinds of groups who prey on the most desperate once they are sent back... coyotes & polleros. I asked my contact how to spell the latter and they requested I not even say the name out loud.

We are now attempting to reach out to her sister who she spoke with earlier. At least to pass on a message of where a safe location would be for her to meet up with us at. It is hard to describe this feeling.

We got in touch with her sister. She told us she did speak with her sister on the man’s phone and that she said she’s ok. This is unfortunately not true. We will call again later tonight, but there isn’t much else we can do at this point...

Sex/human trafficking are nothing new to the city of Juárez. But with an influx of migrants/refugees trying to make their way to the US, and w/ the US turning away more people and implementing Trump’s new “Migrant Protection Protocol”, we are putting more innocent people at risk.

I wish I had more positive things to report from the day. Honestly, giving kids cold oranges and seeing them slurp them up was it. Everything else was depressing. We failed with our primary mission today - we failed to protect that woman. And this is happening every day.

To wrap the thread: I witnessed kids w/o parents & parents claiming their kids were taken from them AS OF TODAY by the U.S. A woman from Cuba was sobbing that her passport was taken @ the border & she was sent back to Mexico & I saw that same woman get taken outside the facility.