Missing ‘Million’: Jamaican 5-y-o girl separated from mom in Mexico-US human smuggling scheme
Published:Wednesday | June 8, 2022 | 12:12 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
A local family is praying that Jamaican and international authorities will expedite the search for a missing five-year-old girl who has been separated from her mother while crossing the dangerous United States (US) border through Mexico.
The past 48 hours have been traumatic for a Waterhouse, St Andrew, family whose communication with their 30-year-old daughter Teresa Wilson, who is detained in the US after being smuggled across the Mexico border, has been limited.
Only one of two children who made the May 25 trip out of Jamaica with their mother has been accounted for.
Lorna Pryce, 67, said her daughter made contact on her arrival in the US and informed her that young Malaisha Millier, nicknamed 'Million', was missing.
“She said she can't find Million. Is like tru dem a run and she have to run … because around 10 of dem. I don't know if Million get mix up with the other batch. 'Cause she and the whole of dem run, but yuh know, as she run in, police pick dem up,” Pryce told The Gleaner from her yard in the volatile community.
According to Pryce, the person designated to receive her daughter in the US has been making checks with the authorities.
The family has denounced social-media claims that the girl may have drowned.
“We a try everything to get to the bottom of it … . We really don't know what's really going on. The person (relative in the US) called Arizona, and Arizona tell her to call Jamaica Consulate,” Pryce said, referring to the flurry of calls made to detention centres.
Wilson left Jamaica with 'Million' and her eight-month-old infant for Panama, then Mexico, on to the US.
There has been a surge in travel between Jamaica and Mexico over the last years, but immigration authorities have been clamping down on locals.
The human-smuggling scheme has been described as dangerous and risky by Sharon F. Saunders, Jamaica's ambassador in Mexico.
Pryce said Wilson was willing to risk the journey out of fear for her life.
Her daughter, popularly known as 'Stushi', had ambitions of escaping not only poverty but the haunting clutches of gun crime.
Pryce lost two sons – including entertainer Risto Benji – to violence. Stushi was the target of gunmen who labelled her an informant.
Benji, whose real name was Michael Benjamin, was shot and killed on May 16, 2011, in Old Harbour, St Catherine.
“Dem fire shot in the yard so she is more scared. That's why she run,” Pryce said of failed attempts to persuade her daughter not to go.
Pryce's daughter, The Gleaner was told, was adamant she would not leave her kids.
Now the anxious grandmother can scarcely sleep at night and her blood pressure has shot up.
“She (Stushi) feel if she is there (US), she would be safer and don't have none of her kids down here. She wants a better life. Poor is crime, as they would say, really,” Pryce said.
Grandfather of the missing child, Lensburt Wilson, said he is saddened by the uncertainty surrounding Malaisha's whereabouts. Before they departed, he often slept with his grandkids at either side of the bed.
“My granddaughter said she would buy me a car,” Wilson said, weeping.
The human-smuggling trips cost around J$300,000 per person, with an extra J$200,000 per child.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Fitz Bailey, who heads the crime portfolio, said the police were aware of Jamaicans' involvement in human-smuggling schemes in an attempt to reach the US through Mexico.
Speaking on the transnational movement for the first time, Commissioner of Police Major General Antony Anderson also said the police have seen the movements of criminals who they are after, who have been named or identified out of the country.
“They use the Central American route to get out of here. We have seen that. We are working with our overseas partners in identifying where they are and also what sort of offences they are doing over there so that we can have a joint investigation on this,” Anderson said.