I am from El Salvador, my family and I have always been poor even know that everyone in the city uses to say that we are the richest family in the city.
My dad had a work but he didn’t earn enough money for the family and also because he is an alcoholic. When I was five years old one time he told my mom that he would come to the U.S. looking for a better work and so he did. The day before he had to leave he told me that I wouldn’t see him in a very long while. I asked him, “why?”, and he just told me that he had to go to a far, far away place. At that time I didn’t understand what was he talking about, but then I did. The day he left I cried for a long while. A year later my mom told me that she had to go to the place that my dad was in. She asked me, with who did I want to stay with, my grandma or my uncle and aunt. I chose my uncle and aunt. So we moved all my stuff with them and I started to stay there so that I could get use to it. The day she left I cried for a long while like when my dad left. She gave me a kiss on the forehead and $5, that was it and then she was gone. It was 9 o’clock and so I had to go to bed at that time because I had to go to school the next day. I couldn’t sleep the whole night because I had been crying. I spend about six months with my uncle when my dad called me and he told that I was going to move with my grandma because it would be better for all of us. So I went to live with my grandma and I grew up with her. When I had almost two years of living with her my mom called me to tell me that ,y dad was going to be deported because he had problems with the cops for domestic violence. One Sunday in march when I had almost five years of living with my grandma my mom called me and she asked me if I wanted to go with her, but before I had a chance of answering her with a yes, she told me that it was a hard trip and that I would suffer a bit. Anyways I said yes. I didn’t care, I just wanted to be with her since I hadn’t seen her for almost five years. A guy called Carlos went to my grandma’s house to tell me what would I need for the trip and tell me kind of what was it going to be like. When the day for me to leave my home country came I was exited but sad at the same time. The first thing I did was to say good bye to my family. Carlos went to my grandma’s house to pick me up. He brought me to San Salvador (El Salvador’s capital) and left me there with another guy. Everyone called that guy tigre. Tigre told me that we were going to another place called Santa Ana because it was close to the border from El Salvador to Guatemala. When we got there we spend a day in a house there. While we were at that house tigre asked me if I wanted to go get some marañones (a kind of fruit from El Salvador) with him and I said yes. The next day they woke us up and told us that we had to cross the border. They said that it was safer if we did it riding bike than riding a car, so a guy called Edwin and I used a bike to cross the border but we had to go fast because we had to follow a car. Edwin and I crossed that border safely but the car that we had to follow was stopped once then it got to us and we kept following it. We got to a hotel and spend the night there. The next day we got in the car and left. We left the bicycles locked, tigre told us that a guy would go pick them up. We went to Guatemala’s capital and took bus to go to a different house that was near the border of Guatemala and Mexico. When we had about hour waiting in that house tigre got there and told us that we were going to get bus to cross the border to get to Mexico. He also told us that if the bus ever stopped that we had to the bathroom and wait there until the bus moved again. When he told us that I was all confused because I had never seen a bus with a bathroom. The last time that the bus stopped we went to the bathroom but tigre was waiting for us by the bathroom door and told us that we were getting down at that stop. Once we got down he told us that we were in Mexico D.F.
He told us to follow him. And we did. We got to a house and he told us that we would stay there for a few days. After some days had pass one time he woke us all up at 3 o’clock in the morning and they had burritos for everyone but no one was hungry. He told us that we had to eat because we were leaving from there and that we weren’t going to have food and we couldn’t bring it with us, so we ate and got to a truck. Once everyone was in the truck they told us that we were going to Monterey, Mexico. We left the house and we spend 24 hours in that truck. It was a really hot weather and we were thirsty and hungry by 8 o’clock but we didn’t have any food nor water and we were tired but we still had to wait about 20 more hours we finally got to Monterey. Now we had a problem, there were cops all around us so we couldn’t get down yet and we had to ride 1 more hour on that truck to get out and safe with no cops around us. After we got down, we had to go to a house and spend the rest of the night and a few more days there. And the worst part of all was that we couldn’t eat until 9 o’clock in the morning but at least we got some water. Since Monterey is next to the United States they told us that the next step would be to finally get to border to get to the U.S. once for all. When the day that we had to cross the border came tigre asked us if anyone could swim but no one could. So we had to cross the Rio Grande on a boat. Once we crossed the river everyone was really happy but we had to hide. We did hide but a jet past over the place we were hiding in and the last thing we saw was men dressed as police officers and their T-Shirt said Border Patrol. We all knew that they were migration men. They took us to the immigration station and they asked us a lot of questions like, “where were we from?” everyone got deported except me because I was a minor. The men talked to me and they explained to me what was going to happen. They told me that they would get me to a place and that I would have to live with other people until they could contact my parents and help me to get away from there. Since I had to go there I had foster parents I went to school and made a lot of friends, all the kids were Hispanic and we received the classes in Spanish. And when I got with my foster parents they gave me new clothes and I finally took a shower after 15 days. I spend there 109 days. At first I didn’t know were was I? so I asked and they told me that I was in Brownsville, Texas. The time that I finally got out of there and went with a woman that I didn’t know but she was my mom’s friend I was really happy because I knew I would get to see my mom after five years. Once the time finally came I was super excited. When I saw my mom I ran hugged, and kissed her on the cheek and I started crying of happiness and she did the same. I spend 4 hours crying. It was the happiest day of my life.