Migrants of Matamoros.
As a documentary photographer I have been passionate about chronicling issues related to social justice and human rights. In this latest series, I travelled to Matamoros, Mexico, to photograph the huge migrant encampment created by the government’s ‘remain in Mexico’ policy for asylum seekers, ironically called the Migrant Protection Protocol.
Sine 1948 the United States has been a signatory to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees the right of any person to seek asylum from persecution. Until the current administration those seeking asylum in the US were permitted to be paroled into the country to await adjudication of their claims. Today they are refused entry and forced to live in the most primitive conditions imaginable in a makeshift camp of 2500 people sandwiched between the town of Matamoros and the Rio Grande. There they wait months, sometimes years, for cursory ‘credible fear’ hearings in the tent courts in Brownsville, Texas, most of which are denied.
The camp is populated primarily by families from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Despite the horrendous conditions, the camp is a hopeful place. They have banded together as a community to help one another survive in the most challenging of circumstances as they demonstrate courage and resilience in their search for a better, safer life for themselves and their children.
