Dan Connell Writes About Refugees from East Africa crossing the Rio Grande
Central Americans are not the only ones risking their lives to get to the United States through Mexico. Tucked in among this northward flow are hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia.
They include hundreds from the troubled northeast African state of Eritrea.
Eritreans have been taking this perilous route for more than a decade to escape the repressive police state their new nation has become. Many have traveled halfway around the world or more just to get to the starting point of this leg of their journey: Quito, Ecuador.
Wode Alem, 39, is one of them. His story is typical.
Dan Connell is a visiting scholar at the Boston University African Studies Center and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focuswho has been writing about Eritrea for nearly 40 years. This is the second in a series on the journeys of Eritrean refugees.