The first time we crossed over to the US we took a chicken with us. That’s what they call migrants on the border: chickens. The guy who organised it was a friend of ours, and the migrant was a relative of his who had just shown up. Five of us left, to start over. We made it to Clint (a suburb of El Paso) and rented a little mobile home there. We stayed for about three weeks, but my brothers and I couldn’t find jobs so we came back.
After that I crossed the border another five or six times. I ‘crowned’, meaning I successfully got the migrants I was bringing over to the other side. I only did it for the money. I didn’t have any, and when you’re on your last legs you make money however you can. I took them to El Paso and then came back. It’d be cool to live there myself someday. It would be another life. There’d still be crime and criminals of course, but not like here in Juárez. As a migrant without papers in Texas you never get to go out – you just go to work and return home. In Juárez problems come to your house by themselves.
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