Manuel Brito was deported from Pittsburgh to Guatemala, where he was later murdered. He had originally left his home country to escape a poor economy and the presence of violent gangs. (Illustration by Anita DuFalla/PublicSource)
“They killed Manuel. They took my only son.”
Francisco’s 23-year-old son had gone out the night before and never returned home. The following day, Francisco’s neighbor came knocking on his door to inform him that Manuel Brito had been killed and his body was laying on the side of a road nearby.
There is a lot we don’t know about Manuel’s death. We do not know how he was killed. We don’t know why, and we don’t know who did it. According to Manuel’s family and friends, he had no history of gang involvement, though it’s difficult to confirm any details about the circumstances of his death from afar.
In early 2014, I met Francisco and his roommate Bernardo Brito — men who are unrelated but both from Santa Maria Nebaj in Guatemala. They came to see me at Casa San Jose, a welcome center in Beechview for Latino immigrants where I worked as a service coordinator. As a service coordinator, it was my job help clients meet their basic needs while also advocating on their behalf. During a typical work week I would help our clients navigate the court system, find affordable health care and enroll in English as a second language classes. When I initially met Francisco and Bernardo, Manuel was still living in Guatemala.
He later traveled across the border and to Pittsburgh. He happily reunited with his father and found steady work. But it all began to unravel only about a year later as agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] were searching for a missing unaccompanied minor from Guatemala. ICE never found that minor, but agents detained Manuel, which led to his deportation. He was killed two years later.
https://www.publicsource.org/the-life-deportation-and-death-of-guatemalan-immigrant-manuel-brito/
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