A 20-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker drowned in the Rio Grande near the U.S.-Mexico border in Brownsville, Texas, aid workers said Wednesday.
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Edwin Rodrigo Castro de la Parra died Tuesday as he was attempting to aid a group of pregnant women attempting to illegally cross the border at the river's edge, Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, told the Associated Press.
Pimentel said Parra's body floated to the riverbank
Parra had escaped violence in Mexico and had been waiting at a camp for nearly a year to legally petition for entry to the U.S. for asylum. The wait was exacerbated by stricter immigration enforcement under the Trump administration and the added hurdle of border closures due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some families at the camp are waiting for court appointments in the U.S., while others have yet to present themselves to American authorities.
Pimentel said Parra was an active figure in the camp's Guatemalan migrant community and others there were devastated to hear of his death.
“It hurts my heart to see the families crying,” Pimentel said. “To hear them say, ‘Please get me out of here, I am scared. I can’t take it any longer.’”
Andrea Rudnik, co-founder of aid organization Team Brownsville, told the AP that Parra was extremely helpful around the camp and had been distributing tents to fellow migrants the day before he died.
She said he will be remembered as a vibrant, intelligent young man who spoke Spanish and an indigenous language fluently and was a leader for his community.
“Really, he died because our administration doesn’t allow people to freely cross to seek asylum,” Rudnik said. “So that quest to request asylum cost him his life.”
More than 1,000 migrants waiting to seek asylum are estimated to be in the camp, which sits along the river’s edge in Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville. The camp grew significantly last October after the Migrant Protection Protocols — known as Trump's “Remain in Mexico” policy — rolled out along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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