‘Traumatised and terrified, with nowhere else to go’: huge numbers of people stuck at US border

For the past eight months, Henry Ruiz and his family have lived in a shelter, unable to venture more than a few blocks in fear of being apprehended by Mexican authorities or criminals. Photograph: Nina Lakhani/The Guardian

When Henry Ruiz* and Raquel Hernandez boarded a bus heading north to America with their two young children, they knew there would be no going back.

It was June 2021, and a few weeks earlier Ruiz, a 28-year-old banana farmer from central Mexico, had been abducted by a group of armed men and taken to an isolated ranch where 15 others – 13 men and two women – were being held.