(Evelin Satuye and her children at Casa Alitas in Tucson, Arizona./ Photo courtesy Evelin Satuye)
By Josh Kelety | Phoenix New Times
Last fall, a Honduran couple and their four young children fled their home country and the violent gang threatening them to try and seek asylum in the United States.
The couple had sold street food for a living while giving the local street gang, also referred to as the maras, a cut of their income every month as a “war tax.” But in August 2020, they came up short, and gang members beat up the father and threatened to force their oldest son into their gang.
“Since we didn’t have the money for the extortion, they requested that we bring our oldest child as a soldier of the maras in exchange,” Evelin Odelsa Flores Satuye, 35, told Phoenix New Times in Spanish through a translator in late July. “I wouldn’t allow for my son to be part of the maras because what I wanted was for my son to study.”
