Neighbors held a small vigil Sunday night on a dirt path along a busy road in Brownsville, at the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, where eight people were killed and 10 were injured at a bus stop that morning.
A small display of flowers and a row of candles grew as shaken people visited the dimly lit curb where the appalling crash occurred.
A car had plowed into a group waiting at a bus stop across from the Ozanam Center, an overnight shelter housing a growing migrant population, most fleeing crises in their home countries in Central and South America, Haiti and parts of Africa.
The victims have not yet been named but many are believed to be Venezuelan.
And police have not yet released the name of the suspected driver, who has been detained. But witnesses said he yelled slurs towards those outside the shelter after attempting to flee the crash scene.
“He said ‘damn your mother, immigrants’,” Freddy Granadillo, who migrated to Texas from Venezuela and was staying at the Ozanam center Sunday, told the Guardian in Spanish.
“Leave my country,” he recalled the driver saying.
Granadillo said he was across the road at the nearest intersection when the crash happened. He ran over and tried to help, but said there was little he could do.
“A human being split apart. One here, one there,” he said. “But you can’t do anything because you’re not a doctor.”
On Sunday evening, cars arrived just after sundown for a memorial mass led by Bishop Daniel Flores of the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville. In the outdoor courtyard of the center, Flores spoke in Spanish to those gathered, many of them who had migrated from troubled Venezuela, noting how migrants feel driven to reach the border and seek refuge and security in the US.
“I’ve met 15-year-olds that leave the other side of the world,” he said.
Across the street, a 15-year-old who lives a short drive down the road came with her parents to leave flowers at the expanding, makeshift memorial. High schooler Monica Limon arrived with a sense of urgency, before many others came with their arrangements. She tied a white bouquet to a street sign where the crash happened.
“When I saw the video of them being run over, it hit me,” said Limon. “Because the people didn’t deserve that.”
As the light faded, people trickled in to a Family Dollar store next to the shelter to buy flowers and decorations for the memorial.
The Ozanam Center is tucked at the east side of Brownsville, just a handful of miles from the Gulf of Mexico and the easternmost city on the border with Mexico that stretches almost 2,000 miles from Texas to California.
The shelter faces a state highway along Minnesota Avenue, where the crash happened on Sunday morning. Migrants are free to leave the shelter and many stroll around the area, congregate outside to chat or wait at the bus stop for transportation.
after newsletter promotion
Jhonaikil Garcia, 18, was heading back to the shelter, where he’s staying, and stopped to talk to the Guardian. He was carrying a plastic shopping bag with a tube of hair gel and a spray bottle. He said he wants to make money working as a barber and he and his 22-year-old brother fled the political and economic calamity that has driven millions from Venezuela in recent years. He plans to offer haircuts in Brownsville, waiting until the price of tickets to his intended destination, Chicago, hopefully go down later this week, he said.
When asked what was the most important help given to him after crossing the border into an unfamiliar country, he said: “More than anything, the roof,” citing the shelter facility.
Sunday, several of the Ozanam residents asked well-wishers for fresh T-shirts and asked where they could get a flag of Venezuela to place at the memorial.
The Brownsville authorities and several non-profits are struggling to assist the high number of migrants now arriving.
Last week, Nurith Galonsky Pizana, who was acting mayor of the city at the time, signed a disaster declaration – as did some other cities on the Texas-Mexico border – giving the authorities access to emergency funds and other resources and powers to help cope with strain on services.
For the last three weeks, migrants have been funneling into the Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course, a city-owned property along the Rio Grande River, facing Matamoros, Mexico. Many cross the long, snaking river, which is an unpredictable body of water that can often prove deadly, as they seek to enter the US, in hopes of asking for asylum after having been blocked at official ports of entry by severe restrictions.
At a press conference last week, the Rio Grande Valley sector border patrol chief, Gloria Chavez, said more than 2,000 migrants were crossing the border without permission every day in the region and the agency had to request help from neighboring border sectors to find extra space to detain and process people. Some are detained and then released to start a process through the US immigration court system, many are deemed ineligible and summarily expelled from the US.
Bishop Flores said at the hastily arranged mass that what happened Sunday morning was senseless. He offered faith and kindness as a way to move forward.
“We have to be good to one another,” he said.
Some trying to take some comfort and hope from the mass said they’ll never forget the horror they witnessed that morning.
