The pollero showed the group how to position themselves onto the tire so their upper body was supported. Ana squinted. She could barely make out his features in the dark, the cave of his black eyes and the long, thick hair he wore in a ponytail. He had on a hooded sweatshirt and dark corduroy pants that concealed the gun she knew he carried.

He’d shown it to them back in Monterrey, as they huddled in a one-room stash house before the next leg of the trip. He’d shown it while instructing them not to speak, to listen to every instruction, the code word should anyone pull them off a bus. The kids had stared wide-eyed. The adults had barely batted an eye.

Ana was the only one who started the trip already in Mexico. The others had journeyed for a month or more, from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. They spoke little to one another. Their accents were noticeable; you never knew whom to trust. And a couple of them spoke Mam, K’iche’, barely any Spanish at all. Ana couldn’t remember quieting for so long. Other than a few whispered words—Where’s the bathroom? I think one of the children is sick—Ana hadn’t spoken in weeks.

The pollero instructed them on how to dog-paddle once they hit the water, even through the waist-high parts of the river, as he waited for a call from a lookout. The mud could swallow them like quicksand if they touched the ground, he said. They would drown and no one would be able to help them if the Border Patrol didn’t come. They needed to paddle with their feet and hold their bags on their heads or with their teeth. Most of the people in the group hoped Border Patrol would catch them. Hoped they could start their asylum process on the other side and not in a tent camp. But the pollero had instructed some of the adults and older teens on where to go to try to blend in if they weren’t caught. What streets to look for, what houses.

But right now, all Ana could see was water. Water like polished black stone. Ana could make out more bushes, more dirt, on the other side. The sides looked the same. Everything scrub, dirt, her own shivering body. During the day in Miguel Alemán, the sun was brutal and unrelenting. She’d folded her one clean shirt under a baseball cap just to protect her neck from sunburn. It was already peeled and raw, because they’d spent the day camped out and hiding at another part of the river.