A red blooded American

When a migrant meets a mosquito...

I’m a bit of an immigration connoisseur. I collect immigration stories the way some people collect baseball cards. One of the best places to get a good story is in an Uber. When I drop into the back seat and the overpowering cologne assaults my nostrils, I know I’m in for an interesting story. I met one driver who used to be a physician in Iraq. When the Gulf War forced him to flee, he hid inside the trunk of a car and was driven ten hours, non-stop, to the Syrian border. I asked the obvious question: what happened when you had to urinate? Well, he had one of those plastic urinals with a cap, the kind you’d see in hospitals. After several attempts to pass the American Board exams and ultimately failing, he resorted to driving with Uber to support him and his family.

Another great place to hear a harrowing immigration story is the emergency department, where I work. One of my favorites is the story of a Chinese man. He’s a Ugyur, which represents an ethnic minority in China. Most Ugyurs are Muslim, and the CCP persecutes them with surveillance, forced labor and sometimes, sterilizations. Partly because of this, America has seen a steady stream of Chinese people crossing its southern border.

This gentleman boarded a plane from Xinjiang and flew into Ecuador. Why Ecuador? My understanding is that they have permissive visa requirements. This story paints a familiar migration pattern for Chinese refugees hoping to enter the U.S.

Upon landing in Ecuador, smugglers are paid to guide them northward, towards the Mexico-US border. When they pass through Colombia, there’s a notorious stretch of land called the Darien Gap. This is the only land bridge that separates North and South America and lies at the border between Colombia and Panama. It’s a treacherous stretch of mountains, rainforest and marshlands without any roads. Passage requires hiking on foot. The weather can be extreme and the rivers flood. It is infested with malaria as well as natural predators like jaguars and pit vipers. There are also predators of the human variety, as narco terrorists and human traffickers make this their stomping ground. Exact numbers are unknown but many have died trying to cross this gauntlet and many have been kidnapped for sex trafficking.

It took the Chinese man and his group about a week to cross the Darien Gap. He made it through fairly unscathed, except a few days later, he started to feel sick. Traveling up through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, he developed shaking chills, vomiting, diarrhea, and extreme fatigue. By the time he made it to Mexico, he was deathly ill. He turned himself into United States border patrol custody. One look at him and they called an ambulance to take him to the hospital. He arrived in septic shock with a heart rate of 140. Blood pressure was low. He sported a fever and a pair of shiny handcuffs. The only thing this man was capable of running away from was life.

So I did my best Noah Wylie impersonation from the show “The Pitt” and resuscitated him. He received IV fluids and antibiotics. About an hour later, I get a call from the lab and they tell me his hemoglobin is five. A normal hemoglobin is around 12 to 15. So I thought, is he bleeding somewhere? I ordered a blood transfusion. They called thirty minutes later to say that he has parasites in his blood stream and it looked like malaria. Then, it all made sense. He crossed through the Darien Gap, was bitten by a mosquito who stole a drop of blood and deposited malaria into his blood stream. Malaria loves red blood cells. They invade, multiply within them to a point where the red blood cells swell and burst. Hence the anemia and shock. So I gave him anti-malarial medications, supported his blood pressure with fluids and vasopressors and admitted him to the ICU.

He survived to be released into border patrol custody. Don’t worry, he left in handcuffs. I don’t know where he is now - probably somewhere stealing someone’s job making delicious beef broccoli and orange chicken at Panda Express.

But the more existential question we should all be asking ourselves is: If a Chinese migrant receives donor blood from the American Red Cross, does that make him a red blooded American?