Some of my colleagues may remember the pictures last summer. when an unprecedented surge of Central American children and families arrived at our Texas border. They are the kind of pictures that really burn into our memories for a lot of us. The pictures we are more used to seeing may be from war zones than to see here in our own country. with hundreds upon hundreds of unaccompanied minors and a lot of mothers with young children in search of protection. literally turning themselves in to our Border Patrol agents. not running away from them. but turning themselves in and asking for asylum. The Rio Grande Valley in South Texas is where Agent Ram Garza works. Ram is the acting patrol agent in charge of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol. The Rio Grande Valley where Ram works is the epicenter of that humanitarian crisis we witnessed last year. That is because most of the migrants were from the northern triangle of Central America. and they were fleeing violence. fleeing economic desperation. and fleeing a sense of hopelessness in Guatemala. Honduras. and El Salvador. These migrants had to travel some 1.500 miles through Mexico. risking life and limb to get to the United States. The shortest routethough by no means an easy oneruns up the east side of Mexico from Central America to the South Texas border. and many of the people who are making that 1.500 mile trek did it on top of a train. In fact. they did it on a series of trainsfreight trains. not passenger trainswhere people actually get on top of the trains and try to hold on for a 1.500 mile trip.
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migrants Border Patrol