The following letter was originally sent to a Ms. María Trejo in La Tinja, Mexico, from her cousin Rosa. It appears that Rosa left her children with María in order to illegally cross the U.S./Mexico border. Her original plan quickly unraveled and she was unable to contact her cousin for over a year after leaving La Tinja. This letter details her journey to the United States and sheds some light on the difficult journey faced by immigrants looking for opportunities in the U.S.

To my dearest cousin,

Surprise! I’m alive! I’m sure by now your mind has reduced me to a pile of coyote-gnawed, sun-bleached bones in the American desert, but rest easily. I am safe! I’ve arrived, finally, in that sanctuary, that land of glittering dreams and sunshine and lawlessness in the face of immigration policy, San Diego.

Here the streets aren’t paved with gold, but with work. I did not even need to show anyone my tits to get a job cleaning tables at a restaurant. I work 80 hours a week, for $4/hour, plus a small room in the house behind the parking lot. My room is small, but since I’m the only woman living there, they’ve given me the only one with a working lock, so I have so much privacy! This is truly the American dream!

But let me explain how I got here. I know I left you behind in La Tinja almost a year ago, promising to send for my children soon. I also know that we had spoken and agreed that if I didn’t get in touch within six months, it would be best to just assume I was dead. But everything went wrong right from the beginning and I got so off track I had no opportunity to contact you safely until now.

It started simply enough. I did just what we planned and headed to Tecate, where I bought myself an identity, a passport and a visa. The prices were higher than I expected, though and I was only able to afford the identity of a Muslim woman from Mexico City, visiting San Diego on a tourist visa.

At the time I wasn’t quite sure why a Muslim identity was cheaper, but I soon found out. Or rather, after hours of waiting in line at the checkpoint I found out. I spent this time carefully arranging a scarf around my hair so that I could better resemble the picture on my new passport. When I finally reached the check point, the border guard took one look at the name on my passport, another at the scarf on my head and quickly called me into the interrogation room. As we were nearing the building, I almost tripped over a rock, recovering quickly and kicking it aside, right into the border guard. The rock knocked into his calf and he raised his gun, pointing it at my face.

“Ma’am I am legally allowed to use lethal force against any rock-throwers on the border. Luckily for you, my wife was feeling sexually generous last night so I’m in a good mood this morning. Continue into the building without another incident and you may just live to see the evening.”

He brought me to a small room and sat me in a chair.

“Listen, don’t think I don’t know about your people. I know why you’re trying to get into America. This is why I signed up to be in border control, so I could keep your type out, so I could protect America,” he told me.

“I’m just trying to visit San Diego,” I said. “I hear it’s beautiful this time of year. And the shopping!”

“WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING?!?!?!” he screamed, slapping the table.

“Planning? I’m not planning anything. Maybe a shopping spree. A visit to the zoo.”

“Listen you little sand [and here he used a word that I will not repeat, dear cousin], I know what you’re up to. I’ve seenFox News, I know all about how you terrorists love to cross our leaky border on fake visas and then bam bye, bye White House. Well not on my watch.”

Luckily, all of the holding cells were full of other “terrorists” apprehended by this same border agent. I was simply returned to Mexico but warned never to come back to this border station or my supposed “rock throwing” would result in lethal force.

Well, I wasn’t going to give up on America so quickly! I moved right along the border until I was just south of the infamous Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, in Sonoyta. Fortunately, there were many men swarming like bees around the border here, waiting to cross or working as mules. I quickly found work in a house of ill repute, serving drinks topless (to get this job I did need to show my tits and more).

After six months of work, I was able to save up $800, still too little to pay a coyote to smuggle me across the border. But then one of the women I worked with told me that if I worked as a mule in the border crossing they would drop the price of my crossing. They were even less likely to beat or rape me! It was perfect!

I left under cover of night within a week, carrying a backpack full of marijuana (which I suspect secretly held several baggies of cocaine, but I never checked). I had been so excited to see how they were hidden, in copies of the Bible or maybe in the stomachs of some teddy bears. But, no, it was just a backpack full of drugs. The coyote told me that the backpack was far more valuable than I was and at the first sign of trouble to hide it in some bushes and run.

We walked and walked, dear cousin, for hours and the heat was unbearable. Even in the dark of night I was sweating and my thirst was maddening. As the days drew on, we began to see the things left behind by the people who came before us. You know how I feel about littering, dear cousin, but you must understand, in this desert you walk a razor thin line between life and death. Every gram discarded gives you a better chance at making it through. So I must admit, I too discarded water bottles. I wish I could have discarded my backpack of drugs, but the coyote watched me carefully, with bloodlust in his eyes.

On our final day before we were to meet a van that would take us into Phoenix, some border patrol agents got too near us. We crouched in the brush, but our coyote took off running, leaving us alone beneath the beating sun. We had been left to die, like so many before us.

Fortunately, he remembered the drugs by later in the day and returned for me. He was a bit silly, I suppose, leaving a backpack of drugs behind with some abandoned immigrants. We made it into Phoenix later that evening and I quickly settled in, finding a job similar to the one I have now, cleaning tables at a restaurant.

This job did not come with housing, though, but luckily I was able to find myself a room in a boarding house. It was small, leaky and smelly and I had to share a bathroom with the whole floor, but its price allowed me to save up money for my journey to San Diego.

While I lived in Phoenix, I met some of the silliest gringos. They weren’t drunk or stupid or falling over like the ones we saw while looking for work down in Cabo, but they were even sillier. One, Tommy, went to university in Phoenix and worked waiting tables at the restaurant with me. He loved to practice his Spanish with me, but he had the funniest ideas about immigration.

“You know, for the past quarter of human history our species has been expanding beyond the bounds of Africa. Why if it weren’t for immigration we would have died off as a species tens of thousands of years ago! And what is immigration anyway, you’re just moving from one location to another. Why should some imaginary political line determine where you can make a life?”

I would laugh at him. Such silly ideas and theories have no place in my life. I have children to feed. These well-fed Americans have too much free time to think about such things.

That is my story. I finally saved up enough money to leave Arizona for good and here I am, in San Diego. I will send you money as soon as my first paycheck comes through. Please spend only what you must and save the rest to send my darling little Miguel and Ana up here. I may be able to get them jobs at the restaurant, washing dishes. That way they too can have a part of the American dream.

I miss you and my children. Give them hugs and kisses from me and give yourself a few!

With love,

Your cousin,

Rosa