Abigail’s husband disappeared in May after he refused to let a Central Mexico drug cartel use his tractor-trailer to transport drugs. When she reported his disappearance to Mexico authorities, the same cartel abducted her and her two small children. If they wanted to live, they told her, her family would have to leave the country. 

Dinora faced a similar threat in Honduras by gang members who had held her and her 17-year-old daughter hostage for three days, repeatedly raping each of them in front of the other. They were told they’d be killed if they didn’t leave. 

And after the body of Carolina’s brother-in-law, a high-ranking police officer, was found dismembered in several garbage bags in Mexico, she and her three young children also fled the country in fear of their lives. 

The stories that drive Latino citizens to seek asylum in the United States are dark, often riddled with death threats from drug cartels, gangs and corrupt law enforcement officials. easily inconceivable by Americans. But the callousness these families have faced from U.S. border officials at the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year has become equally cruel, according to the immigration rights organizations that filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government Wednesday.

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