How Four Dudes Skated from El Salvador to the U.S. to Flee Gang Violence
But their problems were far from over. Members of Los Zetas, one of the most violent cartels in Mexico, informed them that they would have to pay a fifteen hundred dollar toll to cross into the US. Anyone who didn’t pay would be shot on sight. Kelvin and Rene could never afford the fee, so they made a break for it at night.
“We tried to cross and got all the way up to the wall,” says Kelvin. “Then Border Patrol showed up.” He and Rene hid in some shrubs until dawn. “We had to swim back to Mexico to escape,” he says.
Rene and Kelvin’s families pooled together money for a coyote a month later. They were not allowed to take their skateboards with them, but they made it across.
Things only got more complicated in the United States. (Kelvin and Rene have asked that I not disclose their location.) They are staying in a coyote’s one bedroom, one bathroom halfway house with twenty other people. In the bedroom, a small hole punched out of the drywall behind a dresser leads to a secret chamber in case the house is raided. “Five days ago immigration found a different smuggler’s house nearby and took everyone,” Kelvin says. “They could come for us at any moment.
Everyone there is waiting to be smuggled through the nearby Border Patrol checkpoints, a trip that costs three to five thousand dollars. To earn their keep, Kelvin and Rene work around the house, cooking, cleaning and helping the coyotes prepare for their runs. They lay as many as fourteen people flat in a truck bed, and send them off into the night. Neither of them knows when it will be their turn.
“They couldn’t kill me in Mexico, they couldn’t kill me in El Salvador, but just imagine if they finally got me here,” Kelvin says. “This is where we’ve suffered the most.”