Yesterday, Connie and I were driving into Playas del Coco to get some groceries when we saw a woman hitchhiking with a young boy. We pulled over. She climbed in with her son. That’s how we met Carla and David.
Carla wore clothes that looked like they had been bought at Dollar General years ago and worn ever since. David, her ten-year-old, curled into a ball beside her, silent and watchful. When we got out of the car to let them stretch, we could immediately see that David was a special needs child—something Carla hadn’t mentioned but was heartbreakingly obvious in his eyes and the way he clung to her. She told us she had been traveling for five days from Nicaragua without papers, forced to bypass borders on foot through jungle paths. Her plan? To reach Limon—on the far side of Costa Rica—700 kilometers away, crossing two mountain ranges to work in the banana plantations. It was her only hope to send money home to her three other children, left behind with her 75-year-old mother.
As we drove, Carla explained she hadn’t eaten in three days. The buses were too expensive. She didn’t even know where she was. The boy—whose birthday was that day—seemed shy and overwhelmed. His name was David. Her name was Carla. Their story broke something open in us.
When we dropped them at the bus terminal, we gave them what little cash we had, but when we turned back to look for them, they were gone—swallowed up by the city.
We stood on that street, Connie and I, and asked ourselves: What kind of desperation forces a 54-year-old woman to take a special-needs child by the hand, leave her other kids behind with an elderly parent, and risk her life just for the chance to pick bananas in 100-degree heat for $2 an hour?
Costa Rica is a haven for thousands of Nicaraguans like Carla—desperate souls who come here because in one day they can earn what would take them a week back home. If they can find work at all. And Nicaragua is considered stable compared to Guatemala or El Salvador.
Meanwhile, in the United States, we are building places like “Alligator Alcatraz”—a new migrant detention center rising from the swamps of the Florida Everglades. Named with a smirk by politicians who think it’s funny to talk about feeding desperate migrants like Carla and David to the alligators and pythons that roam the wetlands. Built on an old airport 43 miles from Miami, surrounded by swamps, this detention facility was ordered by Florida officials to “efficiently” detain migrants, exploiting nature as a deadly barrier—because, as Florida’s attorney general bragged, “If people get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons.”
This is not some dystopian fiction. This is real. Governor DeSantis invoked emergency powers to build it, President Trump visited it, and federal funds are being used to turn an ecologically vital Unesco World Heritage Site into a holding pen for human beings—many of them mothers, fathers, and children fleeing violence and poverty.
This is the reality of America’s immigration policy: we don’t just want to lock up people like Carla and David; we want to terrify them, humiliate them, and treat them as disposable.
These are not the “criminals,” “rapists,” or “invaders” that demagogues like Donald Trump used to rally fear and votes. These are mothers and children. Fathers and daughters. They are the ones we depend on to pick our strawberries, clean our hotel rooms, and care for our elderly. And yet we treat them as threats to be caged or fed to reptiles.
Carla and David are not strangers. They are us. They are our sisters and brothers, worthy of every bit of God’s grace, every ounce of our outrage, and every action we can take to build a world where no one has to risk everything just to feed their children.
I wish I could forget their faces. But I can’t. And maybe that’s good—because we should all carry the burden of their story until we do something to change it.
Until we remember that the least among us are the measure of us all.
Makes me realise how lucky Iam and grateful for what I do have
My heart is with this mother and child Godbless Bob Connie offer assistance beautiful written thank u for sharing