For The Times:
“About five miles north of Shelby Park, on a grey morning last week, a group of a dozen men, women and children from Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador waded into the water from Mexico, pulling two small children along with them in a rubber ring. They had reached an island just over halfway across when the riverbed began to drop off beneath them, and they froze, waist-deep in the rushing water.
From the other side of the bank, we watched as a young Nicaraguan man and two middle-aged men from Ecuador decided to swim for it, pulling the children along with them. They pushed off the bank and into the current, which swept them up at a ferocious speed. For a moment, it looked as if they wouldn’t make it. One of the older men was dragged further out than the others, and away. But the young man was a very strong swimmer. Somehow, they got onto the bank.
The children, a brother and sister, stood shivering on American soil as the men ran down to throw the rubber ring to their companion. They got there just in time: his head was already under the water.The little girl said her name was Camila and she was nine years old, from Honduras. Her mum was still stuck in the middle of the river. As we watched from the other side, she and her companions shouted for help. We drove to fetch the Border Patrol and found them already on their way.
“Don’t move,” a Spanish-speaking officer called to the migrants across the water. “We’re sending a boat to come and get you.” When he was a child, he told us, he used to swim in the river. But he couldn’t any more: not after the number of bodies he’d pulled out of there. In those currents, even the strongest swimmers struggle.
This time, they were lucky. Within half an hour, officers had arrived on a boat and picked them up. Camila’s mum, shaking violently with the cold, gathered up her children in her arms. Now they would be taken to be processed, their details would be taken and a basic criminal background check carried out. Once they asked for asylum, they would be given a court hearing at the nearest available time. With the current backlog of cases, that would probably be in about three years.”
