Crossing Over: A Mexican Family On The Migrant Trail Summary

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Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail Ruben Martinez was fascinated with the tragedy of three brothers who were killed when the truck carrying them and 23 other undocumented migrants across the Mexico – United States border turned over in a high-speed chase with the U.S. Border Patrol. “Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail” is a story about crossing and life in the United States. Martinez writes about the months he spent on the trailing the immigrants, starting with a stay in Cheran, Mexico, the town of 30,000 Purèpecha Indians, home of the Chavez family. Jaime, Benjamin and Salvador Chavez are survived by 2 brothers, their mother and one sister, located in 2 households, one in Cheran, and the other in Watsonville, California where they worked in the strawberry fields. They were returning to the fields after a visit to Cheran when they were killed. Martinez’s story is not so much one that pieces together the events of the crash, nor the lives of the three youths, but it is an immigrant’s tale, discovered through the crossings of the various Chavez family members and profiles of Cheranos in Mexico. …show more content…

The United States performed multiple operations to stem the flow, starting with Operation Gateway that was soon followed by Operation Safeguard; Operation Hold the Line; and, in Texas, Operation Rio Grande. This forced the same numbers of migrants trying to cross, but now most of them went outside of town where the security is less intense, but now where they faced the hazards of the desert, raging rivers, vigilante farmers, border bandits, and, again, the Border Patrol. In the late part of the 1990s, over 3,000 people died trying to reach safe ground in the United

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