‘All they want is opportunity.’ Migrant kids seek new life in this Fresno County city
This story is part of the Central Valley News Collaborative — a bilingual, community journalism project funded by the Central Valley Community Foundation and with technology and training support from Microsoft Corp. The collaboration includes The Fresno Bee, Valley Public Radio, Vida en el Valle, Radio Bilingüe and the Institute for Media & Public Trust at Fresno State.
Marvin Cornejo didn’t want to join a gang. But in his hometown of Azacualpa, El Salvador — a rural community home to about 200 people — many young men like him don’t get a choice, he said.
When local gang members murdered a classmate during the middle of the school day, he said his mother immediately pulled him out of school, fearing he would be next.
“The violence got really, really bad,” said Cornejo, now 21. “A lot of people I knew were being requested to join. And the sad thing is, you can’t really say no.”
He knew he had to leave El Salvador and he knew where to go: the western Fresno County city of Mendota. His father, Natividad Cornejo, had moved there in 2010 to work in the fields.
In recent years, migrants have fled Central America in record numbers, escaping crime, poverty and violence. Many new arrivals, including children and teenagers who crossed the border without their parents, have settled in Mendota, an agricultural community often referred to as the Cantaloupe Center of the World.
This year, amid a record number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the country’s southwestern border, local officials and advocates say they’ve seen a wave of newcomers arrive in Mendota. And as more migrant youth are released from federal detention centers, local leaders and experts expect them to reunite with family members and sponsors in the city.
Federal authorities have released 112 unaccompanied children to sponsors in Fresno County as of April, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The data are not broken down by city.
“There seems to be a surge right now, but in the next three to four months is really when these numbers are going to be jumping,” said Katherine Krassilnikoff, an attorney with Kids in Need of Defense, an advocacy organization that provides legal aid to migrant children. “We’ve always had very high numbers in Mendota and that’s because the root causes of migration are not going away.”
Mendota has become a known destination for Central American youth due, in part, to its makeup. The city’s population is nearly 97% Latino, and about half of its approximately 11,500 residents were born in Mexico or Central America, according to recent census data. Unlike most of the Valley’s Latino communities — where many residents are of Mexican heritage — about a third of the Mendota’s residents are from Central America.
City leaders are now struggling to accommodate the burgeoning numbers.
School officials and nonprofits have developed specialized academic programs for unaccompanied minors, and work together to connect the youth with other resources. But local leaders are concerned that unless they address the city’s more intractable problems — including high rates of unemployment, especially in the agricultural industry, as well as limited housing and entrenched poverty — the minors might not find the better lives they’re seeking.
About a fifth of the town’s residents are currently unemployed, according to recent data from California’s Employment Development Department, while 40% of Mendota’s residents live in poverty. Many migrant kids are living in garages, spare bedrooms and even outdoor tents due to the lack of available housing, advocates say.
“We’re really overpopulated in Mendota,” said Rolando Castro, the city’s mayor. “There’s nowhere to live here.”
“These people are coming with the American dream,” he added. It’s “tough,” he said, for those who risk their lives to cross the border, only to find in Mendota “the same issues and no opportunity… All they want is opportunity.”
Unaccompanied minors settle in Mendota
When Cornejo made the decision to flee El Salvador in 2016, Mendota was an obvious destination. Everyone in Azacualpa knew about the Central Valley city. Many have friends and family there, he said, and they know they can get by speaking Spanish.
He imagined the U.S. as a bustling metropolitan country with skyscrapers and large buildings. But when he arrived, he was surprised to discover that Mendota was so rural.
“In my mind, the U.S. was like skyscrapers and big cities,” he said. “And then I come to the Central Valley and it’s not that different. It’s almost the same, except over there there are mountains everywhere and here it’s all flat.”
The similarities between his hometown and Mendota extend beyond their landscapes.
Across Mendota’s main retail strip, shops and storefronts proudly wave flags from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico side-by-side, reflecting the diverse population of Latino migrants the city has received over the years.
The city’s main corridor is lined with pupuserias, which serve pupusas, a traditional Salvadoran specialty that is made from pillowy balls of masa stuffed with cheese, beans, chicharrones or meat. They’re placed on a hot griddle and resemble a dense corn pancake when cooked.
Cornejo didn’t speak English when he arrived in Mendota and struggled to acclimate to the culture. But he said Mendota’s pupusas made him feel closer to home.
“There are a lot of people in Mendota from El Salvador — they make food that reminds me of home,” Cornejo said. “Among all foods, pupusas always make me happy. It just brings memories of when I would hang out with my friends or when my mom would make pupusas.”
Mendota works to meet migrants’ needs
In the five years since Cornejo arrived in Mendota, many more migrant youth have come to the city as well.
At least 14 unaccompanied minors enrolled in the Mendota Unified School District in the past year, said Manuel Bautista, the district’s director of instructional services. He suspects many more newly arrived youth between the ages of 16 and 17 opted out of online classes because of the pandemic, and instead went straight to work. He’s concerned those students will never enroll in school.
Now, as the district prepares for more immigrant youth to enroll in classes in the upcoming school year, Bautista says it is well-prepared to meet the new students’ needs. The district has already learned valuable lessons — like the benefit of hiring elementary school teachers to help teach literacy to recently arrived high school-age students, he said.
“There’s just different needs,” Bautista said. “I had kids sometimes that hadn’t been to school at all and now they’re 12 or 13 years old. That was a challenge, but having the right people in place that understand early literacy, that understand reading development — that’s been very successful for us.”
The school is also integrating immigrant students in other ways, including through a “newcomer pathway” program to help prepare students for college or pursue a vocational career in welding, truck driving, or another technical field.
“We’re really working on trying to make it a true college and career high school, where it’s not just about everybody going to college, but it’s about providing opportunity for everybody,” Bautista said.
Local organizations are also taking steps to help new students find their footing.
Centro la Familia, a Fresno-based nonprofit that provides counseling and advocacy services, has launched a pilot program — known as Opportunities for Youth — that aims to provide support for unaccompanied minors.
The program, which is funded through a grant from the California Department of Social Services, is focused on youth up to age 21, said Yadira Sanchez, a case manager with Centro la Familia. Through the program, case managers enroll kids into Medi-Cal and other state-sponsored programs, as well as provide mentors and support groups for children who have experienced trauma.
“We are hoping that as we start to meet them and get to know them that they’re able to open up so that we’re able to link them to services,” she said. “We ourselves are not psychologists, we’re not able to help them with that trauma, but we’re able to support them and connect them to those resources that can.”
Unaccompanied minors have opportunities in Fresno County
But local leaders are concerned about the children’s lives outside the classroom.
Dino Perez, executive director of Westside Youth, a community organization and recreational center in Mendota, worries that newly arrived young people will choose to work in the fields, in order to send money back to their families, rather than attend school. He’s concerned that they’ll continue to re-create the cycle of poverty if they get stuck working in low-wage jobs.
“There’s so much more potential in this country and more opportunities,” Perez said. “We need to expose them to successful people that came from where they came from... hopefully that will spark them to want to do more.”
“Even though we’re overpopulated, we find a way to survive,” said Castro, the city’s mayor. “I want to welcome them and show them how great this country is.”
Like many unaccompanied minors, Cornejo expected to arrive in Mendota and work in the fields. But with the support of his guidance counselors, the school district and Westside Youth, he quickly learned English and excelled at school.
He’s now studying chemistry at California State University, Fresno, and hopes to be a doctor one day. He also helps mentor migrant children and wants to inspire them to learn English, pursue their passions and follow in his footsteps.
“I’m trying to be somebody they can look up to, that they can trust, reach out to and can talk to so maybe I can help,” he said. “I always thought that if I’m here, I’m probably here for a reason, and I want to make a change. Who knows, maybe I can change somebody’s life.”
This story was originally published June 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.