Welcome to the United States
Congresswoman, Mayra Flores represented Texas’s 34th congressional district. She was the first female Mexican-borne member of the House of Representatives.
Flores announced that, “We have rape trees all over South Texas, all over our southern border.”
“Every time a child or woman is raped, they take away their undergarments, their bra and their underwear and they hang it on a tree. That is a rape tree and it’s all over the southern border. I ask for people if they see them to burn them.”
When asked by a reporter if she had seen the trees, Flores responded: “Absolutely. Yeah, they’re real. People here in South Texas know of them.”
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Congresswoman, Monica De La Cruz, the first Republican and first woman to represent Texas’s 15th congressional district since its creation in 1903 said that migrants are raped by drug cartel members and human smugglers known as coyotes.
De La Cruz proclaimed: “Rape Trees – that is a horrific thing that happens to some illegal people coming across our border through cartel and coyotes. These coyotes leave as a trophy women’s undergarments, showing that’s where this gross violation takes place. There are several different places in South Texas.”
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United States Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, tweeted that he had seen the “rape trees” after visiting South Texas. He wrote: “What’s happening at the border is inhumane, it’s evil, and it cannot be defended.”
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Elizabeth Goldberg, of Fusion Media Group, a division of Televisa-Univision, reported that the number of Central American woman and girls crossing into the United States had been increasing. Her report estimated that eighty percent of the women and girls crossing into the United States, by way of Mexico, were raped during their journey. “Rape had been perpetrated by guides, fellow migrants, bandits, or government officials. Sometimes sex was used as a form of payment, when women and girls did not have money to pay bribes.”
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New York Times reporter, Manny Fernandez published an article entitled, “Braving Heat and Coyotes to be Raped at Border.”
He reported that a 36-year-old mother of three had just completed the journey from her native Guatemala, crossing the Rio Grande on a raft before being led to a house in the Texas border city of McAllen. She said that for weeks she was locked in a room and that the men that she had paid to get her safely to the United States had drugged her with pills and cocaine, refusing to let her out of the room even to bathe. “They raped us so many times they didn’t see us as human beings anymore,” she said.
Fernandez also reported that, “What was less understood is that the violence that befalls migrant woman happens after women reach the supposed safety of the United States.”
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The Republic of Guatemala is a country in Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north and west, Belize to the northeast, Honduras to the east, and El Salvador to the southeast. The center of the Maya civilization was in the territory, now known as Guatemala. It has a population of 17.2 million and is the most populous country in Central America. More than two million children in Guatemala do not attend school. Many of the children are indigenous girls living in rural areas. Child labor in Guatemala is higher than anywhere else in Latin America. More than half the population lives below the poverty line and many children can not afford to go to school.
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The Los Zetas cartel is regarded to be one of the most dangerous and brutal cartels in Mexico. They are known for cruel and violent acts such as beheadings, torture and murder. Their headquarters is based in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across the border from the Texas city of Laredo.
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The American public is finally becoming aware of the rape and torture of women and children attempting to cross into the United States’s southern border.
The President of the United States, the President of Mexico, federal government agencies and military of the United States and Mexico, major news media outlets, and the general public of Mexico are well aware of the abuse that these women and children are suffering.
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Why are these atrocities allowed to continue? Where are the humanitarians? Maybe, it has something to do with racism. The victims are mostly poor, uneducated, Hispanics. Would the authorities come to the rescue of these people if they were Caucasians? – I think so!
James Peifer
