A statement by President Donald Trump on November 1, 2018: “Mass, uncontrolled immigration is especially unfair to the many wonderful, law-abiding immigrants already living here who followed the rules and waited their turn. Some have been waiting for many years. Some have been waiting for a long time. They’ve done everything perfectly.” Although veiled under positive affirmation of legal migration, the Trump administration implies a prejudiced refrain: There is no humanity in illicit migration to our nation, only an excess of aliens. Speaking specifically on border routes, Trump has labeled the rising trend in migrant caravans, famously the Pueblo Sin Fronteras (A People Without Borders) Central American caravan in 2017, as one of gangbangers and drug mules that “have violently overrun the Mexican border.” President Trump paints an image of immigrants themselves wielding the hammer and chisel to break down the Constitution’s stonework, tearing apart our nation’s values through their migration and assimilation.
Yet, who are those who have migrated in error? Southern migrants who flee from violence within their home states, or from economic disparity that chips at their dignity and livelihoods? Crossing soul-stretching terrain, the sheer number of refugees signifies the necessity of the dangerous path. Many of those seeking asylum come from Guatemala, Venezuela, Mexico, and other Latin American nations: over 665,000 refugees since December 2022 have come to the United States from these countries. Between January and August of 2024, Mexico’s government encountered over 920,000 migrants moving through its territory traveling to the United States-Mexico border. Research in 2022 by the UN International Organization for Migration found that 90 percent of migrants have fled Mexico due to organized crime and extortion. “Dry corridors” of drought-ridden agricultural systems and warring cartel violence on the Mexican border have pushed Guatemalan migrants northward. Migrants from Venezuela are travelling to escape an economic collapse and the rise of violent crime. Between March 2023 and September 2024, over 477,000 Venezuelan refugees traveled through Panama’s treacherous Darién Gap, a dense, inhospitable rainforest, as they continued northward.
What encapsulates the disparaging aspects of the path are its modes of transportation, no less formidable than the natural barriers. Far in the distance of beating heat waves appears La Bestia, The Beast, or El Tren de la Muerte, the Train of Death. As it chugs along the southern Mexican state of Chiapas toward the US border, hundreds of thousands of Mexican and Central American migrants cling to its cold, metal extremities, hoping to survive the journey northward. The name of the freight train portrays its history—featured in accounts of hundreds of migrant deaths and mutilations. Gang pressure of transportation tolls, with brutal assaults if not paid, are a stark reality on the trail. Reports by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have detailed a violent control over southern freight migration routes by the Mara Salvatrucha gang (commonly known as MS-13), while Central American pathways are increasingly occupied by members of Barrio 18. The International Organization for Migration reported over 1,457 deaths and disappearances throughout the Americas in 2022 alone. Many aboard La Bestia are women, children, and families simply searching for new opportunities.
In a cargo train station in southern Tierra Blanca, Mexico, Oscar, an immigrant from El Salvador offers an account: “[La Bestia is dangerous] not only because of the gangsters, but also because of the dangers on the top of the train. A little girl fell from the roof a few days ago and was cut in two.” Although desperate lands may wink out into the distance, feelings of safety are yet to be discovered aboard the train. As warm wind rips past the faces of immigrants atop of The Beast, the uncertainty of their future condition is an existential weight on their shoulders.
Yet, hope advances in the small acts played out by those with pure hearts, aiding strangers simply for the sake of humanity’s moral agreement of goodwill. Within Southern Mexico stands the municipality of Amatlán de los Reyes. In the heart of the town lies a pink storefront and a kitchen full of volunteer women who brand themselves as Las Patronas de La Bestia: The Patron Saints of the Beast. For 27 years, they have provided a sorely needed food supply to migrants aboard La Bestia. The Romero Vasquez sisters began the operation in 1995 as they returned from the grocery store, milk and bread in hand, alarmed by the sound of migrant passengers on the transnational railroad, asking for the possessions in the sisters’ hands. Norma Romero Vasquez was quick to throw all of her supplies to the wanting travelers. On return home, their mother Doña Leonidas answered the situation, first prepping thirty portions of simple ingredients within her home to sling forth to upcoming passengers. Decades later, the women of the tienda (store) wait for the sound of buzzing tracks as they hurry with their supply. Norma Romero and a group of volunteer women, garbed in blue jeans, open-toed shoes, and traditional Mexican blouses, wait patiently beside the tracks, long and dilapidated with weeds and native flora. They await the arrival of the Beast with offerings: choppings of cheap beef, steaming rice and beans, and bottles of water attached by string, easily grabbed by the Beast’s passengers. Veering close to the bars sticking out from the freight, the Mexican women put their lives on the line to reach their plastic-wrapped packages to hands that they’ve never met and who they will never see again. For some, Las Patronas provide the only meal in days. Despite facing harassment from both local authorities and organized criminal groups within their pueblo (town), their work has no signs of receding.
As La Bestia reaches Mexico City, its tracks fragment into a network of freight lines moving to the United States border: opportunity, fresh and undiscovered, past an arid stretch of the Sonoran desert. Yet, once they enter the United States, most migrants are stamped with a scarlet letter, as their stigmatized illegal status bars them from asylum claims and cultural assimilation in the United States. Under the new presidential administration, no love is “owed to thy neighbor,” and with promises of an upsurge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and Guantanamo Bay detention centers, Central American and Mexican immigrants are faced with increased persecution. This includes a national emergency declaration by the United States at the Southern border, DNA testing of migrants, expanding expedited removal, halting refugee admissions, and further restraints on migrants’ right to exist. Latin American migrant groups, moving from the frying pan into the fires of false freedom, find themselves at the head of the same serpentine system whose tail whipped at their livelihood down South.
The Trump administration has spent time weaving rhetoric of malice and ill-will among its supporters, deploying Trump’s personal Ten Commandments of immigration-based executive orders. Despite the impact of national systems trampling upon the lives of those searching for freedom, one truth is certain: humanity is found in the hands of those who come to the aid in the midst of a humanitarian crisis. Of those who walk the northward path of jungle and arid terrain, speckles of holy light can be found in the ones who bring temporary salvation to hungry hands. Angels, noticing such a pilgrimage of suffering, take on a mortal form to provide food, water, and basic needs for survival. Scapulars of the La Virgen de Guadalupe may strengthen the minds and spirit of migrant families on their journey across the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Puebla, but it is Las Patronas and other locals who fill their stomachs. As La Bestia travels from desolate land to a nation unforgiving of its passengers, a narrative can be shared of loving your neighbor when your nation fails to do so, of those willing to sacrifice their goods and risk their lives for the sake of others: patron saints, who silently give aid beneath the rhythm of the beast.