Migrants wait for their chance at the “American Dream” in Sasabe

A group of about a dozen migrants sits on top of a hill just east of Sasabe, Arizona.

“We crossed at one in the morning,” Nalim Saecavizza, a migrant from Guatemala said.

It’s now just past 10 in the morning, and the group wonders when border patrol agents will come get them.

Vans drive by, but they don’t stop to pick them up.

Some of the group is tired of waiting. They start heading in the direction of the agents.

Walking through a construction zone as federal contractors are doing anti-erosion work around the border wall.

Im going to wait, Saecavizza says.

The migrants in the group are from Nicaragua and Guatemala.

While some of them said ongoing violence in their home countries made it dangerous to live there, economic security was their primary reason for coming to America.

“I came out of necessity because I am poor,” Juan Gunung from Guatemala said. “So I dreamed the American dream, to overcome and give my family a good life.”

Saecavizza says he had friends from Guatemala who previously crossed the border and are now living in Oakland, California.

Those friends told him he would be able to come and stay too.

“This is the American Dream, you know? Saecavizza said. “To come here and to work hard to have a better life.”

But he also says he knows many Americans are concerned about the situation at the border. Saecavizza still hopes he will be allowed to stay.

I know this is something they dont want to have, immigrants. But not everyone is a bad person,” Saecavizza said.

Last week, Tucson border patrol reported over 12,000 migrant apprehensions, as numbers once again are on the rise.