Mutilated immigrants ask for audience with Obama

A group of undocumented immigrants from Honduras who were maimed during their trip to the United States on board the freight train known as "the Beast" requested an audience with President Barack Obama, to talk about possible "solutions" to the tragedy of many of his compatriots.

A caravan of eight disabled Hondurans has travelled through the U.S. in order to get to Washington with hopes of speaking with Obama, something they already called for last Wednesday.

"After thousands of kilometers to get to Washington sleeping in cardboard boxes, across rivers in rafts, after a month and a half as prisoners, being treated as criminals there, we are finally here, hoping on getting to meet President Barack Obama," expressed 29-year-old José Luis Hernández.

The Honduran walked around the White House trying to get a letter to any employee who would deliver it to Obama, and finally they were able to talk to a staff member, Hernández explained.

The letter asks Obama for a meeting in order to present him with the immigrants testimony and emphasize the need to help Honduras and improve the local opportunities in order to keep more young people from risking their lives by immigrating to the U.S.

"Some things are impossible, like for example, having the legs and arms of my comrades to grow again. But prevent further mutilations, more deaths, more disappearances, and more sexual violence, that is possible," reads the letter, according to the Association of Disabled and Returned Immigrants (Amiredis).

The caravan of immigrants left Honduras on February 25, taking a month to pass through Mexico and, when they arrived at the U.S. the immigration authorities intercepted them and took them to a detention center in the town of Pearsall, near San Antonio.

After 45 days in which they were "chained and humiliated," according to the letter, they managed to leave the center thanks to a group of activists and continued their journey to the White House.