the cut on tuesdays

What Comes Next for the Migrants of the Caravan?

Photo: Photo Illustration by Stevie Remsberg/Photos Getty, Fox News/Youtube

The Cut on Tuesdays

A weekly podcast from the Cut and Gimlet Media, with host Molly Fischer.

A caravan of migrants from Central America reached the U.S. border a few weeks ago, after weeks of overheated news coverage and scare-mongering tweets from the president. Now, thousands are living in a camp in Tijuana, waiting to find out whether they’ll be allowed in the country.

Producer Sarah McVeigh visited the camp to talk to women about what life is like in limbo — caught between countries, separated from their families, with no idea what comes next. In this week’s show, she’s sharing some of the stories she heard.

SARAH: They left San Pedro Sula in Honduras in mid-October and they traveled for six weeks to reach Tijuana — that’s nearly a 3,000-mile journey. So it’s like walking from New York to L.A. Occasionally, along the way, freight trucks would stop and give them rides. But that can be really dangerous, too. A woman named Lucia who traveled with her 2-year-old told me what it was like.


LUCIA: Well, at times it was really hard, because there were a lot of people climbing onto the tall trucks and we had to climb up, too. And the trucks were moving. We had to climb however we could. I sent my cousin up first, and then my aunt, and then I would pass my daughter to her — and then the other people traveling with us would help me up. My daughter almost fell off once, and that was horrible. And at that point I just didn’t even want to be myself. I mean, I started crying; I thought, What am I doing risking my daughter’s life? If anything happens to my daughter … God forbid.


SARAH: Hearing Lucia makes you think, What are people leaving behind that this seems better? That you might have to risk your child’s life in order to get away? You don’t walk 3,000 miles on foot with a 2-year-old for fun.

Click above to listen, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts — and check back on the Cut later this week to read more women’s stories and see photos from Tijuana.

Hear the Stories of Women Who Traveled With the Caravan