It is the current temporary housing of up to 13,000 newly evacuated Afghan refugees, although army officials would not reveal the actual number at the base.
Marcos Andrés Hernandez Calderon lives in the nearby town of La Crosse, Wisconsin, knows his situations all too well and how difficult it will be for this generation of refugees.
Calderon was one of thousands who arrived at Fort McCoy itself, who fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba as a refugee more than 40 years ago, and arrived by boat for the first time in South Florida.
“You can see how your country disappears in your eyes. You don’t know when you’ll be back, when you’ll see your family again,” Calderon told CNN, drowning in tears as he pleaded for people to put on the skin of these refugees, shoes he once wore. “So feel what they feel. It’s not easy, you know. Being separated from your family, getting to a country where you just don’t know anything. I don’t know the language, I don’t know people, you don’t know how you’ll like it or you won’t like people. “
The conditions of the 1980 influx of Cuban refugees, also known as the “Mariel Boatlift,” were different from those now being fled by thousands of Afghan refugees. Named for the port of Mariel, west of Havana, these “Marielitos” left after Castro announced they could, in numbers that eventually reached approximately 125,000 people, mostly making the boat trip.
Some of them had been released from Cuban prisons and mental health centers, prompting a volatile population in places like Fort McCoy at the time.
“Living there was eh … it was something,” Calderon said with a laugh. “They were people from psychic hospitals, they were people from prison, they were people from the government, they were people from everywhere and many didn’t like them. Sometimes you had fights, sometimes you danced, sometimes you listened to music.”
It is a situation that he and other Cubans like him in rural Wisconsin see differently than what is happening now.
“I don’t think they’re as scared as we are, because they came to seek asylum because of the war that was out there,” said Jose Lores, a 64-year-old former Cuban refugee who arrived in South Florida by boat on June 1980 before being taken to Fort McCoy. “They know they were persecuted and they [the Taliban] they were going to kill them. They will have to thank God for America because America opens the door to receive them. ”
“Just because you don’t know them, they’re a different race, they have a different color, it doesn’t matter. We’re all human and we all deserve a second chance,” said Norberto Gomez Mendez, a 63-year-old former Cuban refugee. “I think here in America, you open the door to the whole world. America is built from people who immigrate from all over the world.”
Learn the language
Based on their own experiences, these Cubans have simple tips for this new generation of refugees.
“Learn the language. Find help … with people who are willing to do it,” Calderon told CNN. “Because it’s very, very, very difficult to come from another country where you can’t buy anything or ask people for directions or anything so you can’t communicate.”
Outside of language, learning the general rules of a completely strange environment can be a difficult process.
“They will have to have someone with them who knows what the situation is,” Gomez Mendez said.
“In order to move, move and learn, they will have to have constant guidance.”
These are guidelines that range from getting a proper job and education to staying out of trouble with law enforcement.
“Learn the law of the land,” Lores said. “Why? We came from a country where we only knew one law, communist legislation. That’s all. When we got to America, we didn’t really learn the law until years later, and that’s one of the things that got us. we are in trouble “.
The consequences of making a mistake can last a lifetime.
In 1988, when Marcos Calderon was living in Minnesota, he said someone was selling cocaine at his house. “They got me because the drug was in my house,” Calderon said. He was eventually sentenced to federal prison, where he served a three-year sentence and was released in 1992.
“Even today I am punished for this crime, I cannot return home,” Calderon said, maintaining that he has served his time and denouncing the current dynamic as unfair. “We are more American citizens than Cubans. We have the blood, we have the body, we have lived longer in this country. And we ask for a second chance, a chance, for someone to help us, to be able to own things, to travel, to vote. To be treated like an American, “Calderon said through tears, visibly shaken.
Without citizenship, Calderon and others in a similar situation must pay an annual fee of $ 410 to continually renew their authorization to work in the United States. It is a complicated network of government policies that these Cubans do not want Afghans to ever have to deal with.
Concern and enthusiasm
The Pentagon said Friday that there are currently 25,600 Afghan evacuees housed in eight U.S. military facilities, including Fort McCoy.
With the presence of refugees, it has left some around Wisconsin with concerns, from politicians to citizens.
“If we let some people who create acts of terror escape, this will poison the whole operation and that would be a hoax,” US Senator Ron Johnson said during a tour of Fort McCoy in late August, where he said approximately a thousand Afghans were detained.
In the nearby area of Sparta, Wisconsin, there is concern and enthusiasm about what the next steps might be for these refugees.
“One of the things that worries me is just the general safety of … the citizens of our community, especially women and children, there’s only a huge cultural difference,” said Erica Culpitt, a 34-year-old Spartan. . resident.
Michelle Hamilton, who has lived in Sparta for about 30 years, said: “It’s a little scary because we don’t know them, but at the same time, they’re people. They’re scared, too.”
“I think we should help them because they are still human,” he added.
Many have helped, donating clothes, shoes and everything they could, being an effort led by the Rubicon team along with a coalition of other non-profit organizations.
“We’re literally flying the plane as we build it, so every day is a constant iteration about how we receive, how we continue to do better and more efficiently,” Team delaicruz CEO Rubicon told CNN . . “We need to make sure we can provide these basics as they move forward.”
For Cubans a generation ago, they remember how they were treated and the tensions arising from the transplant to a new country: a new world.
Marcos Calderon said, “Be yourself. Be prepared. Learn the American way. Don’t make mistakes like many immigrants have done. Do good to others. Demonstrate to the United States of America what they have done for them. .. it has been a good thing, and they are grateful to be here and receive this help “.
CNN’s Michael Conte contributed to this report.