US-bound migrants take the long way through Latin America

Mohamud Warfa Hirsi is a long way from home. From a dusty Kenyan refugee camp, he has reached the sticky heat of the Caribbean, and his journey is not over.

The 27-year-old Somali has traveled nearly 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) from East Africa. His hoped-for destination now lies hundreds of miles to the north, in the United States.

"My journey was very hard," he told AFP.

He has made it to an obscure milestone on the transcontinental refugee trail: Colombia's port of Turbo.

Warfa Hirsi is one of thousands of migrants treading this trail through South and Central America.

They risk arrest, drowning, disease and abuse by people-traffickers. But still they come in their thousands.

From Turbo, traffickers take them by boat to a remote bay up the coast from where they can cross the border into Panama.

- Drowned -

Arriving by boat and plane from countries like Cuba and Haiti, and from as far away as Africa and Asia, migrants gather in Turbo, sleeping in hotels, abandoned buildings or under the stars.

They cram without life vests onto boats, sometimes with 40 people in a craft made for 20, braving four-meter (13-foot) waves.

"Vessels have capsized. These people have been drowning in the sea," said Brigadier General Adolfo Enrique Martinez, head of a Colombian navy anti-drugs task force in Turbo.
Those who make it to the border will trudge through the Darien jungle into Panama, risking hunger, dehydration and disease, and on through Central America.

One Cuban migrant, 33-year-old computer engineer Aliex Artiles, tried it that way in 2010.

He wants to reach the United States to apply for residency under a special US agreement with Cuba.

Last time he got through the Panamanian jungle and as far as Mexico, where the authorities sent him back home.

This year, Artiles set off again, by plane from Havana to Trinidad, then by ferry to volatile Venezuela, from where he crossed the border into Colombia.

Now he is in Turbo.

"At first, we were sleeping out on the square. There were more than 60 of us. Then someone let us stay in this warehouse," Artiles said.

"There are more than 500 of us now. There are three pregnant women and various children. And more are arriving every day."

- Diseased -

Artiles is one of hundreds of Cubans in Turbo.
"We just want them to let us travel onwards safely. We all qualify for the Cuban settlement law" in the United States," he said.

Outside the disused warehouse near the port, they shave and brush their teeth under the baking sun.

Women stand in line to use washing machines. Children cry and run around inside over the mattresses where the families sleep.

A state ombudsman for the surrounding district, William Gonzalez, warns that the overcrowding in the warehouse poses a health risk. Two people there have been hospitalized with malaria.

"It is a shocking situation," he said.

- 'Impossible' -

The city's hotels welcome the migrants who can pay.

"We are practically always full with them. And they pay in dollars," said hotel receptionist Ingrida Cordoba.

She showed a photograph on her mobile phone. A recent Congolese guest sent it to her after he made it to Miami.
Among the current guests at another, more basic hotel, is Jean-Baptiste Geraldo, 27. He fled from the impoverished Caribbean island of Haiti.

"The situation there was very difficult," he said. "I want to go to a country where there are opportunities."

He reached Colombia via Brazil. Like many others, he has taken a roundabout route hoping to reach the United States.

The journey has got harder since Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua tightened their borders in recent months.

A government delegate in Turbo, Emelides Munoz, said authorities in the district have detained more than 4,000 illegal migrants so far this year -- more than the total for the whole of 2015.

The head of the Colombian migration agency, Christian Kruger, said it was "impossible" for them to agree to help the migrants pass through.

"If we allowed them to leave for another country we would be formally accepting an illegal situation," he told AFP.

"We would be contributing to the criminal trafficking of migrants." 

With its port and plantations, Turbo, population 163,000, is a center of banana production and trafficking of drugs and people.

The United Nations estimates the gangs make billions of dollars trafficking migrants through the region.

- Deported -

Having fled civil war in his native Somalia, Warfa Hirsi grew up in the vast Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

In March, he said goodbye to his family there and left for Ethiopia. From there, Hirsi flew to Brazil, where he worked briefly before heading for Colombia.

"They deported me three times," said Hirsi, who finally made it to Turbo.

He is tired. But he still smiles and his eyes twinkle.

In the United States, he said, "I will be a doctor, God willing."

Source: AFP