There’s a much bigger border crisis, and it’s in South America

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I met Gladys (not her real name) and her two sons at a casa de paso, a short-term shelter run by the Archdiocese of Bogotá, Colombia. Her four-year-old is a ball of energy, charming and silly. He introduces himself and his little brother and shows me around the large room they share with half a dozen other families from Venezuela. He shows me where he and his brother sleep and jumps from bed to bed, telling me the names of those who sleep in each and where in Venezuela they come from.

Gladys and her family left Caracas a few weeks ago, wearing out their shoes on the 300-odd miles from the Venezuelan border. I ask her about why she left Venezuela: “One has nothing. Nothing to eat. Nothing to wear. Everything is horrible.”

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