When Felipe and Monica Moreno showed up at our food bank here in Northeast Denver, they were living crammed in with Felipe’s sister and her family. They arrived just before Christmas from Juarez, Mexico, because they were getting death threats made against them.
Felipe owns a lonchera in Juarez, one of those burrito trucks that sells short-order burritos and tacos to workers on the street, and the drug gangs wanted a cut of the profits.
When they came here, they probably could have applied as refugees for asylum, but as most immigrants do, they just showed up.
Like Joseph with his pregnant wife Mary bearing the Christ child into Bethlehem, Felipe’s wife Monica was pregnant with their third child when they arrived. Monica’s first baby, Felipe Jr. — or Felipin, as he was affectionately known — was also a miracle child. She and Felipe had prayed and waited and argued for nine years after their marriage, hoping and trying to have a child. Finally, when little Felipe was born in 2001, he was welcomed as a milagro, or miracle, an answer to prayer. A sister, Andrea, followed three years later.
So, when they appeared at our door, friends and members of Annunciation Church and Twin Parishes Food Bank helped them and the children, ages 9 and 7, get winter coats, clothes and essential food. My wife, the parish nurse, got them all flu shots, took the kids to be enrolled in school and supported Monica with her pregnancy. Soon after Christmas, another healthy baby girl, Jimena, was born. However, after several months, unable to find work and feeling they were becoming a burden on their extended family, Felipe decided to take his family and move back to Juarez to restart their life there.
That restart came to a violent and bloody end earlier this month as Felipe Jr., age 9, was helping his dad at the lonchera. A white Ford Expedition pulled up to the burrito van and a man jumped out and sprayed it with bullets from a high-caliber gun. Felipe Sr., working inside behind the counter, grabbed his son and dropped to the floor, shielding him with his body until the attackers sped off, leaving three customers dead out front. According to a family member, when Felipe Sr. sat up to see if his son was OK underneath him, his shirt was soaked in blood. Felipe Jr. died in his father’s arms.
According to the Mexican prosecutor, Felipe Sr. was the intended target of the shooting, though the family says Felipe and his son were just bystanders. Regardless, the threats and violence they fled when they came to Denver this past winter were all too real.
Thirty-six thousand people have died in Mexico since the current war on drugs began four years ago, meaning it more than meets the United Nations’ definition of a war, which is having 1,000 battlefield deaths in a year. In the two days before and after Felipe’s murder, 41 were killed in Juarez alone.
To top it off, the Mexican police have seized the lonchera as evidence and Felipe Sr. has lost his only source of livelihood.
When I talked to an immigration lawyer to see if the family would qualify to seek asylum in the U.S. on humanitarian grounds, I was told it’s virtually impossible. You would have to prove a pervasive, country-wide risk to the life of the asylum seeker.
Barring a legal miracle, hope for the Moreno family, still reeling from the death of their son, lies soaked in blood and riddled with bullets. The family is another victim slipping away in the daily cascade of news bites and sound bits from the shattered city of Juarez.
Jeremy Simons is the interim director at Annunciation Church-Twin Parishes Food Bank and can be reached at justpeaceadvocate@gmail.com. He was member of the 2006 Colorado Voices panel.
