For one Honduran single mom fleeing threats, Trump dashes American dream

Alexandra Ulmer - Reuters - 21/01
Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president on Monday, Honduran migrant Denia Mendez's phone started buzzing with news that the app she had used to book her U.S. asylum appointment was down.
  • Denia Mendez's Tuesday asylum appointment canceled
  • Newly sworn-in President Trump cracks down on immigration
  • Mendez crushed after year-long dream of United States
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president on Monday, Honduran migrant Denia Mendez's phone started buzzing with news that the app she had used to book her U.S. asylum appointment was down.
Afraid of what this meant for her long-awaited appointment on Jan. 21, Mendez, sitting in the patio of a migrant shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras, called her teenage daughter Sofia who had the CBP One appointment app on her phone.
"Bring me the phone now, quickly," Mendez told Sofia, who was upstairs in the shelter. "Run, run!"
For Mendez, a 32-year-old single mom, the Jan. 21 asylum appointment had been a full, fraught year in the making.
She recounted a harrowing tale from Jan. 1, 2024, when a gang member in Honduras demanded a fortnightly payment of some $120 from the proceeds of her small Tupperware business. Unable to meet the demand, Mendez said she pleaded for two months to get the money. Five days later, another gang member came with the same demand.
"He told me: you get warned twice. The third time we won't be talking," Mendez said.
Fearing for her life, she fled that night with her daughter Sofia, now 15, and son Isai, now 13. She left without saying goodbye to anyone to avoid the risk of being denounced.
Over the course of a week, Mendez made her way to Monterrey, Mexico, with the help of money sent by a brother in Maryland.
In Monterrey, she found work packing tortillas, working eight-hour shifts a day. She changed phones and abandoned her Facebook account as she said she kept receiving threatening messages from the gang members in Honduras.
Mendez, who was orphaned as a toddler and left school at eight to help her grandmother sell cakes and tamales in the street, wanted her children to continue their education.
But Mendez said she was turned away from two schools in Monterrey and was not allowed to speak to the principals. She suspects she was the subject of discrimination.
For a year, Mendez said she logged into the CBP One app d...
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