NOGALES, Ariz. — Desperate times call for desperate measures.
That's what Hector Sanchez said drove him and his group to travel from Central Mexico to the border in Nogales, Arizona.
"They [criminals] killed my cousin," he told 12News. "They kicked us out of our house. We don't have anywhere to return to and we can't go back."
Sylvia Sotelo said criminals kidnapped her 14-year-old daughter. And when she got her back, she discovered someone had sexually assaulted her.
"They told me that if I talked they will come for us," she said. "So I quiet down. And I didn't say anything. But now my daughter is pregnant. And so we had to leave."
They decided now would be the time to cross before Title 42 officially ended Thursday night.
"That's what encouraged us to do this," Soltero said. "It was the last alternative from what we were hearing on the news, which is gonna get more complicated after."
So they, like hundreds or thousands of others across the state, came to la frontera, the border.
The group Sotelo and Sanchez were in was just one of the many encounters the Border Patrol had Thursday.
The gap near Nogales is one of the biggest in the border wall. Most groups will cross right there and present themselves to officials waiting on the other side. But other gaps along the wall are busy too like in Sasabe, just west of Nogales.
"Somos samaritanos," Gail Kocourek calls out to a group scouting the gap in the wall there. Her group, Tucson Samaritans, travels the desert giving or leaving out lifesaving water and food for those making the journey.
They know the desert is unforgiving and the migrants or asylum seekers are not told the truth about it.
"They get lied to constantly, Kocourek said. "They don't have a clue."
The Border
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