‘Dreamers’ urge compassion for families, children at US border

Amid an increase in migration at the US-Mexico border, DACA recipients relive their own journeys to the US decades ago.

Washington, DC – Angelica Villalobos still remembers the bumpy, 16-hour bus ride that she, her parents and her four siblings took to reach the United States border 25 years ago. The family, originally from the Mexican city of Guanajuato, waded through the Rio Grande River to finally get into the US, where they hoped to begin a new life with better opportunities. She was 11 years old and didn’t know how to swim. “It was scary,” Villalobos, now 36 and with five children of her own, told Al Jazeera in a phone interview from Oklahoma, where she now lives with her family. “Once we started walking in the river, I couldn’t reach the ground, so I pretty much just had to hold on to another person who dragged me through.”