‘No free passes’: The costly journey to the southern border

(NewsNation) — Nearly 5 million migrants and asylum seekers have crossed the southern border illegally in the past two years alone, but that journey comes with a hefty price tag for those who are often hoping to escape violence and corruption for a fresh start.

Kevier Medero, his wife and three children reached that destination in December after a 2,500-mile journey from Caracas, Venezuela.

But after months of traveling on foot, by bus, automobile and boat, the message Medero says they received after jumping a fence at Eagle Pass, Texas, welcomed the family not only to a new country but a new reality.

“(We were told) ‘No free passes,” Medero told NewsNation through a translator. “This is America. Nothing is free here.”

Welcoming cities like New York, Chicago and Denver have already spent billions of dollars to provide housing, health care, and other services to migrants who are among the 104,000 newcomers shipped to sanctuary cities by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. But it has all come at a steep cost, both to cities charged to care for the newcomers and to those migrating to the U.S. on their own dime.

The cost of leaving for a fresh start

Medero says he owned a small shop in Caracas and was threatened by a small organized crime group that told him he and his family would be killed if he did not pay them. The threats were enough to prompt Medero to take his wife and three children, all under the age of 11, on a costly and monthslong trek to the border.

Whether it meant paying a stranger $80 to transport them by boat across a river between Colombia and Panama or handing over $200 to board a bus between Nicaragua and Honduras, Medero never became fazed by the financial commitment to the journey.

“I was awfully scared, but the thing is (America) could be a better life and so we were going to come no matter despite how scared I was,” Medero said.

Along the way, the family trekked through forests and jungles. They slept in tents, refugee centers, churches or in homes of strangers who put them up. But Medero says the family also encountered police or military officials who took their paperwork and then demanded $1,000 to have it returned and to allow the family to pass through a check point.

Medero said it became common for drug trafficking organization members to threaten to harm him and his family if they did not pay them, threats thousands of other migrants also reported face.

“Everyone is always trying to get your money,” Medero said.

The cost of mapping out a border journey

According to a 2021 Migration Policy Institute report, migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador spent an estimated $2.2 billion on migration over a five-year period and 89% of trips that were destined for the U.S.

Migrants traveling using temporary tourist and employment visas spent an average of $4,500 per person to reach their destinations, while those who traveled on their own or with a caravan spent an average of $2,900. But those who migrated by using a smuggler spent an average of $7,500, the study found.

The study indicates 55% of migrants hired a smuggler, according to the Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center. These smugglers generated an estimated $2 billion to $6 billion a year.

Many migrants are aware of the costs they will face even before they leave, according to Gabriella Sanchez, an immigration research fellow at Georgetown University.

But what they can’t factor in is unexpected encounters, she said.

“People have information,” Sanchez said. “The problem is they don’t have the capability of controlling the context that they are traveling through.”

Like Medero, Leonardo Pérez Suárez told NewsNation he left his home in Cuba with his son and pregnant wife with $2,000. He needed to work in Peru for four months to save up the $10,000 needed for the two-month journey to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Although the family received sympathy and some financial support because his wife was expecting, Pérez Suárez said his family also witnessed violence and corruption along their way to the border.

Financial troubles continued on the other side of the border. Like Medero, Pérez Suárez is not authorized to work in the U.S. and faces an eviction from a Chicago shelter on March 16.

He is also still two years out from his scheduled hearing with immigration officials. But because of his hope for a better life, the father of two says leaving their old lives in Cuba behind was worth it.

“We are still young,” said Pérez Suárez, whose wife gave birth days after arriving in a Chicago shelter in January. “There is still a possibility of becoming better here. There was no future (in Cuba).”

Little help, no work available

Despite the investment they have made to get to the U.S., migrants do not often see much of a return. In most cases, they live in limbo while awaiting immigration hearings without the possibility of working legally.

In New York, city officials are expected to start again providing migrants with prepaid debit cards that provide each individual with $12 per day to buy food and other goods. For a family of four, that would amount to about $1,440 per month.

The program could cost as much as $53 million with another $2 million going to the service provider, Mobility Capital, The New York Times reported. The plan, which was seen as a savings to the city with thousands of migrant meals either uneaten or wasted, has been characterized as “insane” by Abbott and criticized by other New York City officials.

Denver not-for-profits, many of which are state-backed, are helping migrants with rental assistance, security fees, and other temporary housing costs, as well as connecting them with clinics to help them get work permits. However, the city is not providing migrants with other forms of assistance, a spokesperson with the Denver Department of Human Services told NewsNation.

“I feel good about the people around us (in the shelter), but what I don’t feel good about is the system,” Medero said through the translator. “It hasn’t provided an outlet to get out of this situation. I didn’t come here to ask for money or things. This is not what I thought I would need to do here.”

In most cases, migrants say their investment and journey is worth the effort. But Sanchez says that to simply characterize migrants as illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. in search of work is to do them a major disservice.

“If we only see migrants as people who want to work, we have already forgotten who they are as people,” the Georgetown research fellow said. “They don’t just work. They want a meaningful life. They want to fall in love. They want kids. They want parties. People are not just traveling to leave a bad country behind and then to just work. Everybody has the right to lead a great life.

“We have to keep in mind if people are traveling and they are going through all of this, they want to live.”