Jasbleidy Montejo and her husband were so close to their dream of finding a new beginning — and a safer world for their six-month-old daughter — in the U.S.
But after the family had made it thousands of miles from their home in Colombia, violence found them again. In San Luis Rio Colorado, a border town in Mexico, a group of men ordered them off the bus they were traveling on. They shoved them in SUVs with hoods over their heads and told them they had just three days to come up with thousands of dollars — or else. Through a stroke of luck, the couple was able to secure the money with family help and made it through Arizona — and then finally to San Jose — after crossing the border by foot.
A year and a half later, the loan that saved their lives is still being paid off.
Sitting in a conference room at the headquarters of Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment, a San Jose-based nonprofit that links migrants to essential services like housing and education, Montejo said she owes her life to the organization.
Amigos de Guadalupe lead community navigator Misrayn Mendoza, center, speaks to attendees during a community organizing meeting on housing at the center in east San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Josie Lepe for Bay Area News Group)
“They are my angels,” said Montejo, 20, through a Spanish translator. “They pretty much saved us.”
Montejo’s story is a reflection of a broader trend impacting the San Jose nonprofit: As pandemic-related immigration restrictions are lifted, a steady flow of immigrants have been crossing the U.S.-Mexico border from Central and South America, sparking both a humanitarian and political crisis in the U.S. with no end in sight. The Bay Area News Group recently chronicled the journey of a family from Venezuela who traveled over 7,000 miles to San Jose. In many cases, violence or political instability has led millions to make their way north.
It’s what brought Montejo, her husband Alexander Herreno and her baby daughter Ashley to leave their ranch in the town of San Jose del Guaviare, where paramilitary groups were demanding cash payments from them. On May 25, 2022, they’d finally had enough.
Accompanied by another family member, the Montejos traveled first to Cancún, Mexico, and tried boarding a flight to Tijuana, but were blocked by immigration officials. So instead they journeyed by bus, eventually reaching a town by the border. That’s when trouble began.
The men who took them off the bus — who they later discovered were coyotes, who help smuggle people across the border — squeezed $3,600 from the Montejos through their family in Colombia. Then, late at night, after the payment had been made, the coyotes brought them to the border and told them to run north. Treading over dirt with her infant daughter in her arms, Montejo didn’t know if she could make it.
“I was almost going to give up,” she said. “But we all gave words of encouragement.”
Then around 7 a.m. the following day, a U.S. immigration truck picked them up in Arizona. The family spent three days in a detention center before being released, though Montejo’s brother-in-law, who had been traveling with them, was sent back home. With the little clothes and money they had, the Montejos boarded a flight to San Jose at the urging of another migrant who was with them.
Upon landing in the city, they had nowhere to sleep and settled on the night of June 6, 2022, at a local park near Saratoga. Exhausted and without food, it had taken them 12 days to reach America. Then, a nearby resident of the park — who Montejo described as “a little angel” — urged the family to seek help at Amigos de Guadalupe.
“They came very broken,” said Misrayn Mendoza Rivera, lead community navigator for the organization, through tears. “The daughter was sick. They were scared. They didn’t know what to do.”
Founded in 2012 and based out of San Jose’s Mayfair neighborhood, Amigos de Guadalupe helps with college scholarship programs, provides after-school programming and rental assistance. It also offers critical immigration services and legal aid and is currently helping about three to four migrant families per day who arrive in San Jose — 161 families, 520 individuals, and 257 children in the last year. The nonprofit is seeking $50,000 in Wish Book donations to help the new families that have arrived, and the many more still expected to come.
“Since last summer, there has been a fairly significant influx of families directly from the border here in San Jose,” said Director of Social Impact and Sustainability Stephanie Jayne. “From what we can tell, we are the primary organization that is welcoming these families in and serving them.”
Neymar, 9, left, from Colombia, and Isac, 6, right, from El Salvador, build a house with blocks while they wait for their parents, who are attending a community organizing meeting on housing at the Amigos de Guadalupe center in east San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Josie Lepe for Bay Area News Group)
Montejo, her husband and daughter are living in an interim shelter while trying to find more permanent housing. Montejo is currently in school, studying English and health with the eventual goal of becoming a nurse. She also works as a caretaker while juggling spending time with her daughter — and likes to look up makeup and hair tutorials online in the little free moments she has. Her husband takes manual labor jobs, like dishwashing, and is trying to pay down the thousands of dollars the family back in Colombia still owes.
Montejo said the person she misses the most is her mom. But she’s happy to have come to the United States.
“I am going to school,” said Montejo in English. “I am working.”
If things don’t work out as a nurse, she has a backup plan as a law enforcement officer.
“That’s another passion of mine,” she said. “I want to get people who are bad.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization operated by The Mercury News. Since 1983, Wish Book has been producing series of stories during the holiday season that highlight the wishes of those in need and invite readers to help fulfill them.
WISH
Donations will help support the Amigos de Guadalupe Center for Justice and Empowerment’s Welcoming Fund, which would serve about 350 individuals, including 92 newly arrived families and up to 50 new families expected to arrive throughout the year, providing them with housing and basic needs, such as food and healthcare and legal services. Goal: $50,000
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com/donate or mail in this form.
ONLINE EXTRA
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