Indigenous asylum seekers struggle for interpreters in US

A shortage of translators for Indigenous asylum seekers means many have to wait months or years in Mexico to apply for asylum.

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – For Claudia, the journey from her small Guatemalan village in Guatemala to the US-Mexico border was complicated by the fact she could speak only her native Ixil, one of 21 Mayan languages in Guatemala. On way to what she had hoped would be asylum in the United States, she communicated with the smugglers with hand gestures and the few words of Spanish she knew, to ask for water, food, money, and to go to the toilet. Claudia and her four-year-old son Manuel arrived at the US border at the end of December 2020. Her smugglers dropped them off at a highway right next to the Rio Grande and told her to walk past the dry river and turn herself in to the US Border Patrol. Claudia did not want her last name published for fear of reprisals.