It has been a year since Jefferson made the journey to the United States with his mother, Nusly. Their story is chronicled earlier in Substack. A house was mortgaged to pay the coyote $20,000 and they wound up trafficked and held hostage on the east coast until two of us, American citizens and friends of the family, intervened and managed to get them out of where they were and on to a Greyhound bus headed west. They ended up with family members in Kansas City in the dead of winter. Nusly eventually found work in a restaurant but as a condition of the assistance in getting rescued and on to Kansas City she had to agree to enroll Jefferson in high school. He had always been an eager student and just wanted to go back to school and learn English.
As they live in an area populated by the marginalized, the high school that Jefferson attends ranks 25th in Kansas City. As he completed the 10th grade before leaving Guatemala he was discouraged about being put into the 9th grade for the remaining half of the school year. I explained to him that, while he likely knew the material, they probably wanted him to just work on his English and that, in the fall, they would put him into a higher grade. He sent me a science worksheet on asexual reproduction and said that he had covered that material in the seventh grade. He had gone to a good school in Guatemala supported by an Italian non-profit.
While Jefferson is very enthusiastic about his educational possibilities in the United States he does miss the rest of his family left behind in Guatemala including his father, a sister named Sharon and a brother, Issac.
Recently Jefferson started the 11th grade but he reports that his fellow students are all Latinos and that “they are racists.” He is applying to move to a school in another district where they will be more “native Americans” with whom he can practice his English. His favorite subjects so far this year are World Geography and Marketing.
Jefferson may or may not know about the plan of the former president, should he be re-elected one way or the other, to put Jefferson and his mother into a concentration camp pending their removal back to Guatemala.
Jefferson’s mother’s plan is to work as much as she can to pay off the coyote debt, support herself and Jefferson in Kansas City, the rest of the family in Guatemala and save enough money to buy a house when she returns to Guatemala.
My hope for Jefferson is that he can finish university in the United States and then return to Guatemala with the credentials to find a decent job. I have no doubt that he will end up supporting his family. For the moment his story is an open book.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s horrible that Nusly has to pay so much money! I hope Jefferson is making use of public libraries.