Visiting Researcher Dan Connell Documents Eritrean Refugees’ Trek Through the Americas

TAPACHULA, MEXICO—It is not hard to find the Eritreans in this low-key town near the Pacific coast a few miles north of the Guatemalan border. They gather on the front steps of the Palafox Hotel with the only other Africans here—Somalis, Ethiopians, a handful of Ghanaians, all of them migrants—or they crowd into the bustling Internet café across the street.

On a recent afternoon, I met two who had been released from a maximum-security detention center here the night before. They were surprisingly at ease, giddy at the thought that they had passed over the last major hurdle to reaching the United States. All they had to do now was fly to northern Mexico and walk across a bridge. But it had been a long, arduous journey, and I could see they were still jumpy.

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