Mexican Sex Nightmare Traps More Women Fleeing Central America for U.S. Dream Anastasia Moloney - Thomson Reuters Foundation
go to original January 13, 2017

Is Rape the Price to Pay for Chasing the American Dream? (Fusion)

Rights groups estimate 30,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, are working in bars in shopping streets and red light districts in the bustling city near the Guatemala border that has become a trafficking hotspot.

This includes increasing numbers of women and children fleeing Central America due to the deteriorating situation, said Francesca Fontanini, spokeswoman for U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

UNHCR figures show the number of Central American migrants seeking asylum abroad surged five-fold in the four years to 2015 to around 110,000.

The number of families, mostly from Central America, stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border jumped 122 percent in the six months to April 2016 compared to a year earlier as authorities cracked down on security, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.

"The majority [of Central American women] come with the hope of crossing the border, looking for the American dream," said Adriana Rebollo, who heads the prosecutor's human trafficking office in Chiapas state where Tapachula is located.

But while chasing their dreams, migrants make easy prey for traffickers on their journey north. Often poor and with little education, they are lured with false promises of good jobs in restaurants and hotels.

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