TIJUANA, Mexico _ A desperate and dehydrated Berline Monelus was deep in the swampy, snake-infested jungle after eight days of walking when the skies opened up. Her boyfriend was moving quickly, carrying their 1-year-old daughter, Thaina, while Monelus lagged behind, losing sight of them.
She reached a river crossing.
"I didn't know which way go to," she said. She stood with her 3-year-old son in the rain-soaked wildness bordering Panama and Colombia and began to cry.
As she stared into the rushing waters, another migrant on the same northern path walked up and volunteered to ferry the boy across on his back. Monelus, 24, handed the child over, instructing Jhonslay Joseph Jr., to hold on tight. It was the last time she saw him.
His last words still ring in her ears. "All I heard was Mamae, Mamae," _ Portuguese for "Mama" _ she said, as the river's deceptively strong currents loosened his tiny grip, sweeping him off the stranger's back and swallowing him whole.
She nearly drowned, too, but another traveler pulled her to safety. For two days, she refused to leave, searching the river's edge for her son. She found another body, but it wasn't Jhonslay. After the second day, members of the group who had stayed to console her forced her to keep moving.
"I didn't know the route had this kind of risk," Monelus said, holding back tears as she sat in a Mexican hotel room not far from the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, two days before her appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "Had I known, I never would have taken it."
After decades of crossing the Florida straits on a 700-mile trip in rickety boats to flee poverty and political turmoil, Haitians have carved out a new route to get to the United States. It's a staggering 7,000-mile journey that starts in Brazil _ which opened its doors to Haitians after the devastating 2010 earthquake _ and cuts through South and Central America, traversing 11 countries and costing thousands of dollars a head in fees to people smugglers _ coyotes in Spanish, passeurs in French _ to find the way across closed borders.
In recent months, an increasing number of Haitians have been attempting the trek _ by minivan and bus, in overcrowded canoes and on foot _ desperate to get to the U.S. border. Mostly young and despairing over the lack of progress in Haiti, they are looking north for hope, joining thousands of violence-fleeing Hondurans and Salvadorans, asylum-seeking Cubans and undocumented migrants from Congo, Mali and as far away as Nepal along a circuitous route to San Diego, Calif.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana told Congress on Sept. 22 that 40,000 Haitians are in transit. So far, nearly 5,000 have made it, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said.
Those who reach the San Ysidro Port of Entry a few miles from downtown San Diego wind up in immigration detention centers first and then _ until last week's shift in U.S. Haiti deportation policy _ are usually paroled into the country with temporary papers. Even so, they prefer the uncertainty of life in the United States to anything in Haiti or Brazil.
"The document you have states that at any time, any decision can be taken," said Ones Alcenat who, like most of the arriving Haitians, headed to Florida after spending five days in immigration lockup and another 15 at a San Diego-area church, Christ United Methodist & Ministry Church in Normal Heights. "Being on American soil is a dream for everyone."
The unprecedented flow of Haitians across the California border can be traced back to late May, when migrant advocates in Tijuana were summoned by Mexican authorities to help with the startling number of arrivals from the Caribbean island. At the same time, other countries along the path were awakening to the new migration pattern.
Panama, which had allowed safe passage to migrants, in May blocked its border crossing at the Darien Gap, where Monelus lost her son. The unforgiving, mountainous section of jungle is home to Colombian FARC rebels, drug traffickers, indigenous Indians and poisonous snakes.
The closure left thousands of migrants, including many Haitians, stranded in Turbo, Colombia, where migrants usually boarded boats to get through the difficult stretch. Last month, Panama reopened the passage.
But those who get through face another hurdle: the border of Costa Rica with Nicaragua. That's where a penniless Rodlen Jean-Baptiste has spent the last six months. He's tried five times to cross Nicaragua to reach Honduras and eventually Tijuana _ without success.
"Life is like that," said Jean-Baptiste, 26, bitter at his circumstance but grateful he's still alive. "There are people who died on the route and I haven't."
Each time he's been sent back, he returns to the same refugee camp in Penas Blancas near the northern border of Costa Rica with "thousands of people, not just Haitians."
But the Sept. 22 decision by the U.S. government to re-start deportations of Haitians _ a practice that had been suspended since the 2010 earthquake _ is making him rethink his plan to have his father send him money to try again.
"If I could go back to Haiti from here, I would. When I was in Haiti, I didn't suffer this kind of misery," Jean-Baptiste said. "I am not interested in going back to Brazil. I was there and it didn't benefit me."
Jean-Baptiste is part of what the leaders of Panama and Costa Rica are calling "a migration crisis" and others characterize as an example of shifting global migration patterns. The dangerous exodus that has swept Europe with migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Italy is a now a new reality in South and Central America, they say.
