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Why would someone cross the border illegally? Hear one man's harrowing story.

When your first day in America means hiding from Border Patrol.

José Miguel Cáceres is a 20-year-old who left Guatemala earlier this year to seek asylum in the U.S.

Here's the story of his first 24 hours at the border, in his own words.


First we arrived there, Camargo. That's the Mexican border with the United States. We were there in a house for four days.

It was a normal house. There were children and their mom and her husband there. Like a normal family. There were six of us, only men. Three of us who were there were from Guatemala, one Nicaraguan and two Salvadorans. I'm 20 years old. The others were 20, 22, 25, all the way up to 40.

We were eating well and able to wash ourselves and everything during those four days. We had everything we needed. On the fourth day, they decided to get us to cross the river.

We left the house in Camargo at five in the afternoon. They picked us up in a white truck and it was only a five-minute ride to the river. We sat in the back and we were covered. We had to be covered because if the army had seen us, they might have killed us or handed us over to immigration.

Once we got to the riverbank, we got out and started to walk. That's when the famous immigration helicopter showed up, the one from the United States.

The helicopter went around in a circle and then lowered a little when it saw us. From there, we dove down on the ground where there were some hills, and we stayed down there a little while. There were lots of plants and thorns.

Illustrations by Kitty Curran/Upworthy

The people from immigration weren't able to see us. The helicopter rose back up, and then from there, it did another circle. That was when we got up and started to run. We ran toward the riverbank so that they wouldn't see where we were. I imagine that maybe they let us go because it's Mexican territory and they weren't able to come down and arrest us. And it was just six people.

When we were watching the helicopter, we were all nervous, all tense. A few of the guys I was with had already been in the U.S. They knew what would happen, how we would suffer if we were caught before we crossed. It's better that they catch you here in the United States than catch you in Mexico. Because throughout Mexico there's a lot of corruption and the police work together with the drug traffickers.

I was coming to the United States because the gangs were extorting me in my neighborhood in Guatemala.

A group of people wanted me to give them money. I was working at McDonald's and they would show up there and ask for money. They would also call my cell phone and home. There were times when they actually came to my neighborhood.

I paid them 3,000 quetzales once, which is about $400. I was a target because I was working and because my family lived in the United States. When they asked me to pay again, I refused. Then they threatened me. They told me they wanted money and if I didn't give it, they were going to kill me. So I spoke with my parents and they immediately sent to bring me here. This was the best option.

I was thinking a lot about my family, my friends, and my girlfriend and her family in Guatemala during the trip. I knew that wherever I was, they were always there with me and supporting me.

So we started running again after the helicopter left. We ran and then we found ourselves another little piece of a hill. Then from there, our guide explained what we were going to do. And he told us that we were going to walk for 15 minutes, to the right.

“OK, 15 minutes," we told ourselves. But 15 minutes became an hour and a half. We walked a good bit, maybe five miles along the river.

We had two guides. They were Mexican, normal people, young, just like us. There was one who had gotten caught maybe a month before. He had a visa or residency here in the United States. But when they caught him bringing people over, they took it away.

When we reached the point where we would cross the river to the United States, we started to inflate the raft.

We were going to inflate it with a pump they brought, but they lost a piece and they had to go back to look for it. We tried to blow it up ourselves, but it was too big. So better to go back and look for the missing piece.

We stayed there, hidden in the brush until one of them came back with the piece and they started to inflate it. "It's good," they told us.

There was just one raft for everyone, for eight people. We needed a raft because the river is very deep and the current is very strong. And the river has whirlpools inside it. That's why many people aren't able to cross. Because they try to swim, but it's too strong.

At that moment, what we were most afraid of was that someone might fall off the raft and into the river. I can't swim, but they gave us life vests.

On one hand, I felt calm because I was using a raft. But on the other hand, I was nervous because an immigration boat could come at any time. And they could arrest us or something.

The raft seemed safe, but it's not.

If the raft hits a wire or maybe a pointy tree branch, even just once, then it can break. Yes, it can break. Then it would send everyone down into the river. We would sink.

We climbed into the raft. There was a person who was rowing and he started to row. It took maybe five minutes to cross and we arrived on the other side. When we finished crossing, it was already dark.

On the other side of the river, the American side, there were woods.

There were plants, trees, and roots all over. We started to climb up a little hill and then they told us to wait a moment.

We waited for five minutes or so and then they gave us instructions for what to do. They told us, "Look, we're going to walk for 15 minutes, that's it. And then someone will show up who will get us in a pickup. The pickup will be there already, waiting. Just a little further."

The walk wasn't hard because there was a dirt road. I think it was for agricultural workers. There are a lot of agricultural companies there, all sorts of companies. Pickup trucks go by there.

When we started to walk, it was around 9 p.m., so there wasn't any light. The sun was down.

Everyone was silent. The one person who said anything was the guide.

He told us what we had to do. He told us first that he wanted us to stay quiet, that we should walk in a line, and that the last one in the back was going to look to make sure no one was coming from behind. If the last person sees someone coming, then warn him.

He said that if we got in a row and went quickly that everything was going to be OK. And that we were going to be with our families soon. They were almost like professionals. I think they cross two groups each day, one in the morning and the other one in the afternoon. They weren't with us for the whole trip. They just cross people over, that's it.

We walked the 15 minutes. Then a guide told us there was a light, and we threw ourselves down in the woods out of fear.

We were worried that someone would be able to see us and was going to arrest us or something like that. There were more thorns on the ground, but when you're in this situation, you don't remember that there are thorns on the ground. We just threw ourselves down.

But then the light passed and they told us, "No, no. It's gone." We continued walking and we arrived at the place where the pickup was supposed to be. But the pickup still hadn't arrived and the guides were worried. They were afraid, too, because if immigration came, the agents would go for them, too.

After all we had gone through, there was a moment of tension because the pickup wasn't where it should have been. So the guides started to call and call and call. We thought about going back.

We were there for 10 minutes, not a long time. But in 10 minutes, you can think about a lot of things. Then suddenly the pickup arrived. "You need to go to the pickup," he said, "but you should go running." The truck was a red GMC and it already had the doors open for us.

We went running to the pickup and since it was night, no one saw us.

We all got in. From there, the driver turned around and we went to a city called Rio Grande.

The last time I had eaten was in the afternoon, but I wasn't hungry. When this is happening, you don't remember if you're hungry or thirsty. All you want is to get out of the situation.

Luckily, we weren't wet. We only got our feet wet, since when we put the raft in the water, we had to climb up. And it was March, so the weather was good. It was a nice day, not too cold, not too hot. I remember the day, it was March 9.

I wore a black sweatshirt, with jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. That's it, they wouldn't let you carry more clothes. I wore them for the whole trip, 10 days.

When we arrived in Rio Grande, we were in a house for about 15 minutes.

It was a nice house and there was a family there. They were good people and they asked us if we wanted something to drink, a soda or a beer. They gave us crackers, something small. They asked if we wanted water, purified water.

The house was pretty big. It had more than one level and maybe five or six rooms, with three trucks parked outside. There was a man, his wife, and a little girl. The man was very nice. They spoke English and they barely spoke Spanish. But two of the guys I was with spoke a little English.

And from there, another young man arrived in a truck and told us, "OK, we're going to McAllen." And then he got us from the house and we got in the truck, a Honda CRV.

We traveled to McAllen and he told us that no matter what — even if the police stop us — we should say we don't know him, that we were just hitchhiking.

There were a lot of police on the highway. We passed 10 patrol cars at one point. We thought they were going to stop us, but they had stopped another person. They had just found a shipment of marijuana and we saw the packages. That's probably what made it so easy for us to pass by at that moment.

The driver was relaxed, though. He was from the United States, but he spoke Spanish. He was 29 or 30 and was wearing boots and a big hat.

It was about 20 minutes from where we were to McAllen. He was playing music and everything. He played Spanish rock music. Maná.

From there, they took us to an auto mechanic shop, where there they told us that two of us would go to an apartment with one guy and the other four would go with another guy. So this is where the group separated.

I went with my friend, the other Guatemalan. They were worried that immigration might check on one of the apartments. This way, if they found one group, they wouldn't get all six of us.

They took us to the apartment, my friend and me.

The apartment wasn't so big. It just had two rooms. One was where the person who was coordinating everything lived. The boss of the operation. In the other room, that was for three of us: me, the other Guatemalan, and a Honduran.

When we arrived at the apartment, it was like 11 p.m. The the Honduran gave us clothes to change into because we were dirty. He told us that the next day we could go to the laundromat.

The room had a television with cable, but no decorations. Just a mattress for him, a mattress for us, a television, and nothing else. That was the room. Oh, and a microwave.

He asked if we were hungry. "Yes, of course," we told him. Then he went to get us food from a restaurant.

We had tacos with beans, a different type than in Mexico. But at that point, anything would have been good. We were really hungry. We stuffed ourselves.

He came and he pulled out a mattress that he had there. He pulled it out and said, "You can sleep here." Then he gave us two sheets. We ate and talked awhile about the experience we had just had. We spoke about the helicopter and all that, about the walking, because we walked a lot. And we thanked God for getting us across uneventfully.

The Honduran guy had already been here six months. He had been living in the apartment, waiting for the right moment to try to pass through the Border Patrol checkpoint on the way to Houston. They were waiting for a rainy day because immigration doesn't go out much when it rains.

After an hour, at maybe 12 a.m., we said, “OK, we're going to sleep because it's time to rest. We've had a rough day."

The Honduran had his own bed and we had a mattress for the two of us. I laid down on the mattress and gave thanks to God for getting us across safely.

I was thankful because there are many people who don't cross the river.

Many people get left behind in the desert. And there are many people who are caught crossing the river. We were lucky to have gotten this far. And we had already gotten through the hardest part.

And from there, we went to sleep. We slept until 9 a.m. the next day and then had breakfast. After a little while, he told us, "Let's go to the shop." The mechanic's shop was only a few blocks away. They didn't want us to stay there alone in the room with nothing to do.

So we walked to the shop to get a change of scenery.

In the shop, we found ways to pass the time. We got to check on some cars and take a few things apart. I don't normally work on cars, but I was watching. There were three mechanics, so we could go with any of those three. If we had any questions about cars, we could ask them. It helped us pass the time more quickly.

A selfie José Miguel took of himself during his time in McAllen. Photo by José Miguel Cáceres, used with permission.

The boss of the operation — who was supposed to help get us to Houston — he was the head of the shop. He had other people who were going to take us to Houston. The shop was big, but he didn't have his own house, just the apartment. He was American, but his mother and father were Honduran and he was born here.

We stayed there until 4 p.m., more or less. When we walked home, the neighborhood was calm. There wasn't traffic and there weren't any people walking around. The street was nice and quiet and there weren't any problems.

Editor's note

I spoke with José Miguel in July at his family's apartment in Arlington, Virginia, where he told me about his first day in the U.S., as well as what came afterward.

He spent five days at the safe house in McAllen while smugglers waited for the right moment to circumvent a Border Patrol checkpoint on the road to Houston. The attempt failed, however, and he was apprehended with 10 other migrants.

He was detained by federal immigration authorities for nearly four months, with most of the time spent at a detention center in Louisiana, far from his family. He was released on bond in mid-July and currently hopes to receive asylum in the U.S.

This is just one story. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, from Oct. 1, 2014, to July 31, 2015, Border Patrol agents made 270,818 apprehensions on the Southwest border — numbers that are lower than last year, but still significant. Many of these people were fleeing violence, poverty, and persecution. Others hoped to reunite with relatives on the other side.

Share this story and help more people understand the reality at the border.

*This text has been edited for narrative flow, grammar, and clarity.

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Three women, three MS journeys: How multiple sclerosis looks different for everyone

Gina, Nathalie and Helga share their reactions to being diagnosed with MS and how they stay informed and positive in the face of ever-changing symptoms.

Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga, Nathalie and Gina all have MS, and their experiences show how differently the disease can manifest.

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It’s been 155 years since neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot gave the first lecture on a mysterious progressive illness he called “multiple sclerosis.” Since then, we’ve learned a lot. We know MS causes the immune system to attack healthy tissue, including damaging the brain and spinal cord. Resulting symptoms can be debilitating and include fatigue, blurred vision, memory problems and weakness. Huge advancements in our understanding of MS and its underlying causes, as well as treatment advances, have been made in the past few decades, but MS remains a complex and unpredictable reality for the 2.8 million+ people diagnosed around the world.

Ironically, the only real constant for people living with MS is change. There’s no set pattern or standard progression of the disease, so each person’s experience is unique. Some people with MS have mild symptoms that worsen slowly but sometimes improve, while others can have severe symptoms that drastically alter their daily lives.

All people with MS share some things in common, however, such as the need to stay informed on the ever-evolving research, find various lines of support and try to remain hopeful as they continue living with the disease.

To better understand what navigating life with MS really looks like, three women shared their MS stories with us. Their journeys demonstrate how MS can look different for different people and interestingly, how the language used to talk about the disease can greatly impact how people understand their realities.

woman with horse, woman riding horseGina loves riding her horse, Benita.Courtesy of Sanofi

Gina—Hamburg, Germany (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2017)

When her youngest son was 4 months old, Gina started having problems with her eye. She’d soon learn she was experiencing optic neuritis—her first symptom of MS.

“Immediately after the diagnosis, I looked up facts on MS because I didn’t know anything about it,” Gina says. “And as soon as I knew what could really happen with this disease, I actually got scared.”

As her family’s primary income provider, she worried about how MS would impact her ability to work as a writer and editor. Her family was afraid she was going to end up in a wheelchair. However, for now, Gina’s MS is managed well enough that she still works full-time and is able to be active.

“When I tell somebody that I have MS, they often don't believe me the first time because I don't fulfill any stereotypes,” she says.

Overwhelmed by negative perspectives on living with MS, Gina sought support in the online MS community, which she found to be much more positive.

“I think it’s important to use as many positive words as you can when talking about MS.” It’s important to be realistic while also conveying hope, she says. “MS is an insidious disease that can cause many bad symptoms…that can be frightening, and you can't gloss over it, either.”

To give back to the online community that helped her so much, Gina started a blog to share her story and help others trying to learn about their diagnosis.

Though she deals with fatigue and cognitive dysfunction sometimes, Gina stays active swimming, biking, riding horses and playing with her sons, who are now 11 and 6.

Cognitive dysfunction is common in MS, with over half of people affected. It can impact memory, attention, planning, and word-finding. As with many aspects of MS, some people experience mild changes, while others face more challenges.

Gina says that while there’s still a lot of education about MS needed, she feels positive about the future of MS because there’s so much research being done.

woman in wheelchair holding medal, woman rowingNathalie is an award-winning rower with multiple international titles.Courtesy of Sanofi

Nathalie — Pennes Mirabeau, France (diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in 2002)

Nathalie was a teenager and a competitive athlete when she noticed her first symptoms of MS, but it would take four years of “limbo” before she was diagnosed.

“Ultimately, the diagnosis was more of a relief, than a shock,” she says. “Because when you have signs and you don’t know why, it’s worse than knowing, in the end, what you have.”

However, learning more about the disease—and the realities of disease progression—scared her.

“That glimpse of the future was direct and traumatic,” she says. Her neurologist explained that the disease evolves differently for everyone, and her situation might end up being serious or very mild. So, she decided to stop comparing herself to others with MS.

She said to herself, “We’ll see what happens, and you’ll manage it bit by bit.”

By 2005, Nathalie’s MS had progressed to the point of needing a wheelchair. However, that has not dampened her competitive spirit.

Nathalie began her international rowing career in 2009 and has won multiple world titles, including two Paralympic medals—silver in London and bronze in Tokyo. Now, at 42, she still trains 11 times a week. Fatigue can be a problem, and sometimes hard workouts leave her with muscle stiffness and shaking, but she credits her ongoing sports career for helping her feel in tune with her body’s signals.

“Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my body, letting my body guide when I need to stop and take breaks,” she says.

Nathalie explains that she used to only look backwards because of the initial shock of her diagnosis. In time, she stopped thinking about what she couldn’t do anymore and focused on her future. She now lives in the following mindset: “Even when doors close, don’t miss out on those that open.” Instead of focusing on what she can’t do, she focuses on the opportunities she still has. Right now, this includes her training for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris, where she will compete for another rowing medal.

“I only go forward,” she says. “Well, I try, anyway…It’s easy to say, it’s not always easy to do. But that’s what I try to do.”

woman exiting water after swimming, woman with great daneHelga's Great Dane has become a helpful and beloved companion.Courtesy of Sanofi

Helga—Johannesburg, South Africa (diagnosed with relapsing multiple sclerosis in 2010)

When Helga first started having balance issues and numbness in her feet, she chalked it up to her training as a runner. But when the numbness moved to her face, she knew something was wrong. She never guessed it was MS.

“When I was diagnosed, I felt completely overwhelmed and clueless,” Helga says. “I felt that I had nowhere near enough information. I did not know anything about the disease…I had no idea that it was going to be a process of continually monitoring and adjusting your lifestyle.”

In the beginning, Helga’s symptoms developed slowly, and she didn’t appear ill to others. She was even able to run for a few years after her diagnosis, but she couldn’t do marathons anymore, and she began to fall frequently due to balance issues and right-foot dragging. Then her cognition issues became more problematic, especially in her job as a trainer in a printing company.

“My executive function, decision-making and short-term memory were affected to the point that I was eventually medically unfit for work,” she says. She stopped working in 2017.

However, she didn’t stop living life. Even though she could no longer run, she continued to swim competitively. She got a Great Dane puppy and trained him as a service dog to help her walk. She also serves as vice chair of the patient support organization Multiple Sclerosis South Africa, and she advises others who have been diagnosed to join a patient advocacy group as soon as possible to get reliable information and meet others with MS.

Helga says she is “hopeful” about the future of MS. “I must say that I am so grateful that we have all the new medications available, because my life would not be the same if it wasn't for that,” she adds.

Part of how she manages her MS is by looking at the positives.

“If I could tell the world one thing about MS, it would be that MS is an incurable disease of the nervous system, but it's also the greatest teacher of valuing your health, family, friends, and managing change in your life,” she says. “My life is diversified in a way that I never, ever thought it would, and MS has been honestly the greatest teacher.”

Each MS journey is unique – with each person impacted experiencing different struggles, successes, and feelings as they manage this unpredictable disease. But the common thread is clear – there is a critical need for information, support, and hope. We are proud to participate in World MS Day and share these incredible stories of living life while living with MS. To learn more about MS, go to https://www.sanofi.com/why-words-really-matter-when-it-comes-to-multiple-sclerosis.

MAT-GLB-2301642-v1.0-05/2023

This article was sponsored by Sanofi. Participants were compensated when applicable.

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