Daily Times

A deportee from the United States trying to get back to the life he spent more than a decade building. A woman whose soldier husband already is in the US with their 4-year-old son. A teenager desperate to earn money to support his diabetic mother back home.

The caravan of Central American migrants traveling through southern Mexico — estimated at around 7,000 people, nearly all Hondurans — has attracted headlines in the United States less than two weeks before Nov. 6 midterm elections.

But most of those walking through blistering tropical temperatures, sleeping on the ground in town squares and relying on donated food from local residents are unaware of US political concerns or even that there’s a vote coming up.

While they commonly cite the same core reasons for migrating — poverty, violence — their stories are deeply personal.

“My record is clean“

David Polanco Lopez, 42, is a former anti-narcotics officer from Progreso, Honduras. He’s traveling north in the caravan with his daughter Jenifer, 19, and his 3-year-old granddaughter, Victoria, whom the adults take turns pushing in a stroller. Polanco came to the United States 13 years ago and applied for asylum after he was threatened by drug traffickers over his police work. He was given a court date, but he acknowledges he never showed up — in part because he didn’t understand the court document’s instructions, which were in English.

Polanco put down roots in Arizona: He married, and got a home. He thought that as long as he stayed out of trouble, he’d be fine.

“If they catch me committing a felony, then go ahead and kick me out,” Polanco said. “But my record is clean.”

He came to the attention of US immigration authorities three months ago when he caught a ride to work with a friend and Arizona police stopped them. Immigration officers later visited his home, he said, asked him to come outside and arrested him.

After being deported, he immediately turned around and headed back toward the United States with the caravan in hopes of rejoining his wife, who is from Mexico.

“I came (to the United States) fleeing the drug traffickers. The US police know that. They told me I qualified for asylum. But they didn’t give it to me,” Polanco said as he rested in the shade of a gas station in the far southern Mexican state of Chiapas. “I can’t live in Honduras because my life is in danger.”

Polanco said he will never give up on trying to return to the US That’s where his home, his family, his land are. He said he’s been paying US taxes for 13 years and never invested a cent in Honduras because “it’s unlivable, dangerous.”

Published in Daily Times, October 26^th 2018.