Editor’s Desk: About those mangoes …

By Brent Cunningham

Ataulfomangoes are back in D.C. grocery stores after a seasonal absence, and in years past I would eagerly pile the yellow, teardrop-shaped fruit into my cart week after week. They’re sweet and creamy, and my family would eat a couple dozen before they disappeared again.

Butthis year my enthusiasm for the mango-fest is tempered by my knowledge of where those mangoes likely come from. Yesterday we published Esther Honig’s heartbreaking account of Jones Carme and the thousands of migrants like him who are trapped in Tapachula, a sprawling city along Mexico’s southern border, effectively forced to pick the very mangoes and other fruits that flourish there, most of which are bound for the United States.

Carme fled the chaos in Haiti several years ago, hoping to restart his life in South America. He left his wife behind but held onto the dream that, once he was settled, she would join him and they would start a family. But in 2019, President Donald Trump threatened to levy a 5 percent tariff on all Mexican goods unless the country agreed to beef up its immigration enforcement.

As Honig writes, “Mexico acquiesced and deployed troops along its southern border with Guatemala, limiting the free movement of migrants … ​​The result is that the migrant crisis that was once at the southern US border has been outsourced, over 2,000 miles away, to Tapachula.” President Biden has kept the restrictions in place.

Stuck in Tapachula for months or sometimes years, these migrants must support themselves, and many, like Carme, take jobs in the booming fruit orchards that dominate the regional economy. They are a captive workforce—the situation has been described as an “open-air prison”—and as such contend with abuses such as wage theft and discrimination.

Honig followed this story for a year, and Carme eventually made it out of Tapachula, though as you’ll find out, it doesn’t have a storybook ending.

Good journalism is often unsettling. But we can’t solve problems without knowing the problems exist—or without understanding the human suffering that results from politically expedient policymaking. This is an important story and as always, we couldn’t do it without your support. Please consider a donation.