Denver Catholic

LOCAL NEWS I 3 DENVER CATHOLIC REGISTER I AUGUST 13, 2014 BY CINDY BROVSKY AND LARA MONTOYA Elio Valladares arrived in the United States from Honduras a year ago under much different circumstance than the estimat- ed 60,000 unaccompanied child immigrants apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol at the south- ern border since October. While the children are poor, Valladares had financial resourc- es he earned from a successful Honduras family business to resettle his wife, Marcella, and their four children in Denver. He speaks fluent English and the on- ly time he spent out of Honduras was when he graduated from the University of Houston with a marketing degree. Still, he can relate to the rea- sons why so many Honduran parents and other families in El Salvador and Guatemala have sent their children to the United States. "Honduras has become a very dangerous place to live," Valladares, 40, told the Denver Catholic Register. "Once the drug trafficking increased it became very unsafe. My brother was kid- napped; my friends have been kidnapped; and one (friend's) family couldn't pay the ransom and the person was killed. Living in Honduras is like living in a jail. You are always afraid." People hired armed guards, lived behind barbed wire fences and carried weapons to protect their families, he said. His children, ages 6 to 13, went to a bilingual school and have adjusted well in Denver, and ini- tially marveled at being able to go to soccer practice at a public park without fearing violence, Valladares said. But it was a struggle for the family to meet and finalize the legal U.S. immigration stan- dards, Valladares said. He under- stands how many poor Central American families feel they have no choice but to try and enter undocumented. "I know why the parents have sent their children to the U.S.," Valladares said. "It is sad to say but in Honduras it will be very hard to change; everything is so political and it seems no one cares." A study of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released last November sought to explain the sudden increase in child immi- gration, and found that a "series of interrelated factors" contrib- uted to what they termed "a perfect storm." One of the most prevalent factors is the general insecurity in the country and the rise of gang activity, particularly that of the Mara Salvatrucha in Honduras, and a rival gang, Bar- rio 18. The numbers of unaccompa- nied children from Honduras that have been stopped at the border this year has grown to 13,000, compared with 968 just five years ago. Alex Morales, who currently resides in Olanchito, Honduras, told El Pueblo Católico that he has two young sons, and that he is afraid for them: "Many young men are losing their lives be- cause they don't join the Maras. The path that avoids violence is very narrow; it seems as if the on- ly solution is to get out of here." Morales noted that in his neighborhood, many children— some alone and others accom- panied by their mothers—have immigrated to the United States with false hopes. "Here we heard that the Amer- ican government had approved a law that legalized kids," he said, adding that the rumor is being actively spread by human traf - fickers. "This is what the Coyotes tell people—for $6,000 to $8,000 they can take a child and deliver it to the mother or father in the United States," Morales stated. Short-term aid Cheryl Martinez-Gloria, direc- tor of the immigration program for Catholic Charities Denver, recently spent two weeks in McAllen, Texas, near the U.S. border with Mexico. She helped local Sacred Heart Parish and other Catholic Charities work- ers provide clean clothes, food and start the immigration pro- cess for the large number of im- migrants landing by bus in the community. The unaccompanied children were not processed in the ar- ea where Martinez-Gloria was working in the Rio Grande Valley. The children she helped had at least one parent with them but the message she heard of why they fled was similar to what her colleagues are hearing from the unaccompanied children, she said. "People need to understand the gravity of the situation, of the poverty and violence in those countries," Martinez-Gloria said. "It is not just a situation where adults want a better standard of life. This is life or death for their children." One family saw their father gunned down during a robbery and the mother fled with her ill son, 13, and daughter, 12, be- cause there was no one to pro- tect them from future violence. Another mother whose son was being recruited by gangs was so fearful she surprised him in the middle of his school day and they fled together to the border. Unaccompanied minors: Immigrants or refugees PHOTO BY JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES SALVADORIAN immigrant Stefany Marjorie, 8, watches as a U.S. Border Patrol agent records family information on July 24 in Mission, Texas. See Refugees, Page 8 BY JULIE FILBY To many Americans, the name Abdulahad appears to be Mus- lim. To Iraqis, it looks Christian. "Here my last name sounds like a Muslim name; there every- body knows it's a Christian last name," Iraqi native Raad Abdula- had, 33, told the Denver Catholic Register. Abdulahad translates to "ser- vant of the only God," or St. Dominic, he explained, simi- lar to the Roman translation of Dominic "of Our Lord." Abdulahad, a Syriac Catholic, experienced prejudice for hav- ing a known Christian surname when living in Iraq. He was ha- rassed to the point of receiving death threats, he said. Seeking safety he left his home in Mosul, Iraq, in 2008. After 19 grueling months as a refugee in Turkey, waiting for his visa to be pro- cessed, he resettled in Littleton where he lives in an apartment and works as an auto technician. His mother, father and sister, also Catholic, remained in Mosul. "They always considered leav- ing but they didn't have too ma- ny choices," he said of his par- ents, age 67 and 66, and sister, 30 (he preferred not to disclose their names for their safety). "We kept hoping things would get better, but they kept getting worse, until it was too late for them now. "I hope it's not." Abdulahad anxiously awaits word from his relatives: his fa- ther, mother, sister (now married with children), brother-in-law, and his two young nieces, age 1 and 3. When insurgents from the militant Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) demanded that thousands of Christians in Mosul convert to Islam, pay a special tax, risk being killed or leave the city by July 19, the six of them piled in a car and fled to safety about 20 miles away in the town of Qaraqush, a major Christian center in the Nineveh Plain. "Everybody just fled," he said. "Of course nobody wants to get killed, but nobody wants to give up his faith. ... There is no other choice. We are what we are; noth- ing's going to change that." Refuge in Qaraqush was short- lived when fighting broke out Aug. 6 and the family was again forced to flee. "My family is in Erbil right now, that's where they ran away to yesterday," Abdulahad said of the capital of the semiauton- omous Kurdish region. "They heard bombing (and knew) it's Iraqi native in Denver works to rescue family back home See Iraq, Page 8 "This is our responsibility to- ward the Lord," he said. The press conference took place amid a still precari- ous existence for Christians and religious minority refu- gees in the Middle East. Some 200,000 abandoned their homes and fled this summer after the radical militant group dubbed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forged its way through Iraq threatening conversion to Islam, taxes or death. Uncounted numbers have become casualties. The world watched as mi- norities fled to the East from the Christian-hub of Mosul to Erbil where food is scarce and the fu- ture uncertain. ISIS's continu- ing threat prompted President Obama to authorize airstrikes on the extremists' artillery and military vehicles to halt the po- tential slaughter of minorities in Erbil. U.S. planes also dropped food and water in crates last week to refugees near Erbil. ISIS militants took control of parts of northern and western Iraq in June, including Mosul. They seized Iraqi army weap- onry and vehicles and also took control of a third of Syria. Last week, they overran Iraq's larg- est Christian town, Qaraqosh, and captured the Mosul Dam, which controls water supply to millions of Iraqis. The Islamic group also threatened last week that it would not stop until they "raise the flag of Allah in the White House." Father Mahanna said, "These threats must not be taken as a joke." The interfaith leaders, joined by nearly a dozen more, gath- ered later that day for an unprecedented interreligious prayer service for peace in the Middle East at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. "Our response must be one of prayer and action to help save those in danger," Archbishop Aquila said. "It is important for us whether we be Jewish, Chris- tian or Muslim that we under- stand that truth that is common to all of our faiths—our God is a God of love." Peace From Page 1

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