WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Reports of the first approvals of President Joe Biden's new immigration parole program, which aims to stop illegal migration at the border, are already surfacing.
Many men, women and children have said they have suffered horrific crimes during the journey from their home country.
WPTV spoke Friday with migrants in West Palm Beach who told their stories while they wait for their asylum cases to be processed.
At the Esperanza Center in West Palm Beach, migrants seek exactly what the center's name stands for — hope.
A woman from Mexico at the center believes brighter days are ahead after she was kidnapped and raped.
She said sometimes she can't even believe everything that's happened to her.
The migrant said she later had a baby that her human traffickers wanted to take away.
"My son, they would have grabbed him to traffic him for his organs," the immigrant said.
The gut-wrenching reality is that children disappear in certain cities, she said, taken from their mother's arms.
With one child and one on the way, she crossed the border into the U.S. and applied for asylum four years ago. Her case is still pending.
"Some of them still have to pay the smuggler's fee," immigration attorney Aileen Walborsky said. "They have to pay attorneys for cases that many will not win, and then they have to find housing. They have to provide for their kids here sometimes without a work permit."
These are the cases that Walborsky volunteers to listen to once a month, offering her services at the Esperanza Center. But there are some cases where not much can be done.
"They told me, 'You and your daughter are getting deported,'" one Guatemalan migrant told WPTV through a translator.
The woman arrived in the U.S. six years ago, escaping a life of struggles. Her asylum was later denied.
"Really, 14 to 16% of those that apply for asylum get asylum. Because to get asylum, you have to show an individualized fear of persecution," Walborsky said. "As you have seen, sitting with me here, embedded as a reporter, many of the times many people come here because of the extreme poverty."
Walborsky said there will be thousands more people that will need help navigating the immigration system with the new parole system.
"We also have to, in our communities, offer more legal assistance for those that come," Walborsky said.
