HOUSTON, Texas.– He disappeared at night, when he was crossing the border river with his sister and two cousins, all minors.
His sister asked him to shake her hand, the water covered half their body, the flow of the Rio Grande was high, they slipped and did not know how to swim.
“
I yelled 'Cristopher' at him, and he didn't answer me.
And I never saw him again”
, she told the young woman, 16, when she was able to speak to her family after being detained by immigration agents.
Cristopher Alvarado Sabillón, a 14-year-old Honduran boy, drowned trying to cross from Piedras Negras, in the Mexican state of Coahuila, to the Texas town of Eagle Pass.
His family confirmed his death four days later, after the discovery of a body floating in the Mexican part of the river.
Now they are fighting to move the body from Mexico to Houston, and bury it where his mother lives.
They are also seeking a humanitarian permit for the grandparents to travel there from Honduras.
Since the young man sank in the river on the night of Saturday, April 9, until his body was found on Wednesday, at least a dozen migrants were found drowned at that same border point, according to the Telemundo News count.
Immigration authorities have added a total of nearly 7,000 searches for injured migrants on the southern border since October.
This is the account of four days of agony of this migrant family:
Monday: the impotence of a mother
His mother found out from a call from the Border Patrol.
Roxana Sabillón, a 35-year-old migrant from Honduras, says she was surprised by the agent's call on Monday morning.
She told him that one of her daughters, 16 years old, was detained in an immigration station along with her two cousins, also minors.
He passed the phone to his daughter and she told him that her brother was with them: "According to my daughter, he was left far behind. She says that she saw when the current swept him away and then they never saw him again."
The Border Patrol confirmed to Noticias Telemundo Investiga that
an agent found three Honduran minors, between the ages of 9 and 16, but that a fourth was missing
.
The area spokesman said that a search was launched without success, while the three boys were detained to continue their immigration process.
Cristopher Alvarado (second from left) took this selfie with his sister and two cousins, with whom he tried to cross the border. Courtesy of the family
The mother says that she did not know that her children were on their way to the United States to be reunited with her.
She had been surprised that they were quieter on WhatsApp and Messenger, they only made a call but there was no message.
Sabillón emigrated to the United States in 2016. During those six years, her children, fatherless, grew up with their grandparents.
Her mother says that organized crime in Honduras, which is cruel to adolescents, targeted by gangs, was the reason that led her two older children to flee silently with their cousins.
After the call from the Patrol, the house in Houston was filled with anguish.
And her voice sounded, from hour to hour, more desperate.
The woman and her sister Leslie, mother of the other two children,
felt helpless and saw no other alternative than to rush to the border to look for Cristopher
.
The family stopped them because they are undocumented immigrants.
Unlike big cities like Houston, there are
checkpoints
on the highways at the border.
“The only thing I wanted as a mother is to be able to run and be there, in the bed where everything happened.
But due to the circumstances I can't.
And that is what makes me feel powerless to be able to go look for my son, ”he told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
It makes me feel powerless not being able to go look for my son."
ROXANA SABILLÓN, MOTHER OF THE DROWNED MIGRANT
Late that night, her husband, Edgar Turcios, took a six-hour drive to Eagle Pass, Texas.
Also Honduran, he acted as Cristopher's stepfather from a distance and assures that they had a good relationship.
"He told me: 'You are not my father by blood, but I loved you as my father," says Turcios.
The highway to the border cuts through lonely towns, with abandoned
western
-style buildings , tractor dealerships and fields with cows.
Also, many
bail bonds
and
fast food
drive-thrus stores are closed at night.
Some trains pass through the track, where migrants from the border can hide.
The road towards Eagle Pass, on the Texas border.Damià Bonmatí
Tuesday: the inaccessible border
In Houston, Roxana Sabillón said she heard her son's voice whisper “mama” every time she closed her eyes.
She couldn't sleep all night despite taking migraine pills.
Haggard, she paced nervously with a small white towel in hand to dry her tears.
In the apartment, everyone had their cell phones in their hands, attentive to any calls or clues on social networks.
Every time the phone rang there was a start.
Sabillón began making calls to the authorities, looking for an operator who spoke Spanish.
- What's going on?
asked a woman who works for the police department in the area where the accident occurred.
— That he has been missing since Saturday night.
— Do you live here in Eagle Pass?
- No, he is of Honduran nationality - and gave him all the details.
— The only option would be to talk to Border Patrol.
They would be the only ones who would know if they found someone.
The mother speaks with the Honduran consulate in McAllen: "The last communication I had with him five days ago."Damià Bonmatí
In her calls, the woman conveyed a sense of objectivity.
Perhaps because she repeated the story so many times, she used words like “supposedly”, “they tell me”, “they report to me”.
She explained that, when crossing, the boy was wearing a black T-shirt.
He accurately answered the questions of the operators, and said goodbye with a "very kind."
But when hanging up, it would break every time.
She would run to the dining room table and smash her tear-stained face against the table.
The mother shows a photo of the dark clothes her son was wearing when crossing. Jerry Hattan
A cousin arrived and told her that she was talking on Facebook with a Mexican woman who had seen the minor, that it would be a young man who said he had drowned, that he was disoriented and looked injured and dirty.
In the house
the voices became higher pitched, filled with hope
.
That lady asked them after a while for 30 dollars to return to the place and send them a photo.
A relative ran to make the money transfer.
But they never received the photo.
A lady tells them on Facebook that she saw the minor and asked for $30 to go photograph him.
Meanwhile, the stepfather reached the river, the place of the accident, but realized that the area is larger and inaccessible than what he remembered crossing decades ago.
I was shrinking and shrinking the map on the cell phone with my finger and there were too many options to search.
Much of the land is private property, fenced and gated, and there is a real threat from Texas Governor Greg Abbott to criminally prosecute anyone who enters private land along the border.
Agents in the area told him to stop looking to avoid trouble.
As night fell, desperate, the family published a post on social networks and
included five phone numbers to contact if they knew anything about the boy
.
Wednesday: the photo that nobody wanted to see
The early morning was difficult for Edgar.
He told it in a motel where he rested, with a coffee to go in one hand and a turkey sausage that he never ate in the other.
She was stalked by messages and calls from Mexico,
with the voices of men who claimed to have kidnapped her stepson and claimed to be from a cartel
.
They paid the ransom because "they were going to kill him" but it was a false kidnapping.
This is how they defraud relatives of migrants
Dec. 30, 202104:38
They were asking for $2,000 for proof of life and $10,000 for a ransom.
Edgar knew that it could be a lie, he knew about the simulations of kidnappings on the border, a practice that Noticias Telemundo investigated.
First thing in the morning, he resumed calls to the Border Patrol, who listened to him patiently, but they referred him to the consulate.
They were mixed in with calls from work, where problems piled up hundreds of miles away due to his absence.
He was trying to take a deep breath so he wouldn't break.
With one hand on the wheel, in the other the cell phone and a notebook with phone numbers on his lap, the stepfather, Edgar Turcios, traveled to the border in search of the minor. Damià Bonmatí
After more than 48 hours without hearing from her stepdaughter, she managed to open communication with the shelter where the federal government has her in custody along with her two cousins.
Upon arrival as unaccompanied minors, they are taken care of by the Department of Health and Human Services before being released to parents.
She is an essential witness, and the family hoped to obtain keys to find Cristopher.
Whether alive or dead.
That idea was timidly installing itself in the adults of the family.
To the children in custody, however, they tried to reassure them that everything was going to be all right.
They connected with the girl, and the stepfather, mother, aunt and cousins joined the call.
The minor told them:
- We all went together.
We were doing well.
The water was up to our waist.
And out of nowhere, my cousin started drowning.
I went to help her.
I began to drown myself and I separated from them.
After a while, we were all close and I told my brother: 'Give me your hand'.
He didn't want to, he didn't listen to me.
I yelled 'Cristopher' at him and he didn't answer me.
And I never saw him again.
The call became a family prayer with the children.
The cousin said tearfully that she missed Cristopher and the adults replied:
— You believe in God, right?
What you have is to kneel before God, who is the only one who sees everything.
He is the only one who helps us.
If we feel peace and security with God, everything will be fine.
They found a young body in the Mexican part of the river.
Powerless from the search and stressed by work, the stepfather decided to return to Houston.
During the drive, he learned that
a young body was found floating in the Mexican part of the river
.
He then received a photo: he was wearing dark clothes and was face down.
Arriving at the house, he repeated to himself that it wasn't Cristopher, that the body didn't look like his.
Until, from the matrimonial room, a torn cry came from his wife like he had never heard before.
A new photo of the body.
of face
The deformed face.
It was Cristopher Alvarado Sabillon.
“They took away half my life, they took it away from me…”
, the mother said after an hour, beside herself, to Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
“Now what remains for me is to go to a wooden box to say goodbye to her.
And that hug I didn't give him."
The house quickly became a collective cry.
Relatives kneeling, lost looks and children running around the door oblivious to what was happening.
One asked that he wanted to be with Roxana and a relative replied:
"Mommy not now, mommy is crying
. "
His whole body was crying, as if his soul couldn't bear to be inside him.
Roxana writhed in the double bed surrounded by relatives and friends who did not know how to comfort her.
She was hugging a large speaker from which a Christian song was coming out, the last one that her son sang with her sister.
They had sent her by phone to her mother, who now feels that this was the farewell of her son.
