TRIPS OF TERROR
An immigrant’s journey to the US
Stories from “Crossings: Untold Stories of Undocumented Migrants”
COURIER LIFE, JULY 16-22, 2021 21
When Elsy was
growing up penniless
in Honduras,
she felt blessed to
live near a river due to
her home’s lack of running
water and plumbing.
Yet, the rising tides would
often fl ood the bamboo-andbrick
structure — eventually
forcing her parents to move
further into the nearby village,
where Elsy lived with her eight
siblings.
Her father eventually
walked out on them when she
was six, and, in her words,
“life became even harder.”
“After sixth grade I stopped
attending school,” she said. “I
left school to help my mother
look after the younger children
while she went to work.
As a teenager I started to
worry about our situation and
wonder what would happen
with my life.”
Elsy’s life is captured in
detail in Sharon Hollins’ new
book “Crossings: Untold Stories
of Undocumented Migrants,”
which spends 12 chapters
recounting the lives of a
dozen immigrants and their
extraordinary journies to
America.
For Elsy, her family’s fi rst
foray to the land of opportunity
came when she was 14, and her
mother made the treacherous
trip to America, believing it
was the best way to improve
her childrens’ economic prospects.
Without her mom to look
after her, Elsy eventually reconnected
with her estranged
father, and began living with
him, her stepmom, and her
three half-siblings in a different
area of Honduras.
The reunion wouldn’t last
long, however. Just before her
15th birthday, three gun-welding
men opened fi re on the
family, killing her dad, and
shooting Elsy in the chest.
“The bullets started whizzing
past my head and going
through the wood of my dad’s
house behind me,” she said.
“I could hear dishes breaking
inside the house as bullets
sprayed the kitchen.”
“I was lucky,” she said. “The
bullet had gone in through my
back and out the other side.
You can still see the mark from
the bullet hole.”
Elsy eventually took up
with a boyfriend, who she left
after he “forced himself” upon
her. But, she later found out,
her life would changed forever.
“My world initially came
crashing down when I fi gured
out that I was pregnant,” she
said. “The pregnancy was from
the rape, and I had few options
and didn’t know what to do.”
Eventually, Elsy gave birth
to a baby girl named Astrid.
Her love for her newborn
was overwhelming, and the
thought of separating herself
from Astrid was devastating,
but Elsy knew that going to the
United States was her best option
to keep Astrid out of extreme
poverty that was rampant
in Honduras.
So Elsy found a female coyote
(the name for a person who
smuggles people illegally), who
took her by car to Guatemala,
and then Mexico, where she
waited on overcrowded dirty
fl oors for about a week, while
waiting for more potential border
crossers to join them.
Eventually, the group totaled
18 people, and they
boarded a bus for the next
rung of their journey.
“If you think that sounds
okay—it wasn’t,” Eksy recalls.
“The journey was excruciating.
Eighteen hours sitting on
the fl oor in a small space with
no stops to get out and go to the
bathroom,” she said.”
When their “suffocating”
journey fi nally took them to the
U.S.-Mexico border, the group
gathered secretly after dark in
a three-bedroom house, which
was usually fi lled with around
50 people.
“The coyotes drink and use
drugs,” Elsy said. “Sometimes
the men take some of the girls
from the groups and force the
girls to have sex with them.”
Avoiding that fate, Elsy patiently
waited until it was fi -
nally their time to go, when
she received her instructions:
“We are going to drive you
for about an hour to a place
near the border,” a coyote told
her. “Once we get you to this
place, then this is what you
are going to do — get out and
run!”
About 40 people braved
barbed-wire fencing for hours
by foot, before reaching awaiting
cars, and drove all the way
to Los Angeles.
“We had made it!” Elsy
said.
Her care-taking coyote
helped her pick out some new
clothes, before fl ying Elsy to
New York in April to be with
her mother. (Long before 9/11,
airport security wasn’t as
strict as it is today for domestic
fl ights).
She reconnected with her
mom, who had been working as
a nanny for a family in Brooklyn,
who drove Elsy’s mom to
pick her up at the airport.
“My mom came armed with
hugs, kisses and a nice sweater
for me.”
The next day, Elsy began
work helping the sister of her
mother’s employer, looking after
fi ve kids. By 1997, Elsy had
managed to get a salary increase
to $420 a week, which
she sent home to her daughter
and other family members
— except for spending a small
amount on English classes,
which helped her become fl uent.
When her employer moved
to a new state, Elsy began
working for a different family
in East Northport on Long Island.
“It so happened that they
had a friend called Willy who
had just been divorced. The
family was helping him by letting
him stay in their home,
and that is how I met my future
husband,” she said.
Willy and Elsy eventually
had two children, and they
were able to fi le the proper
paperwork to allow Astrid to
join them in America. When
Willy got a good job at a local
business, the family was able
to buy their own home in 2006.
Astrid would go up to join the
Navy, before heading off to college.
Now, the immigrant enjoys
her stable life in America,
and has expressed her eternal
gratitude to the country she
worked so hard to live in.
“I love this country and everything
it has given me,” Elsy
says. “I think for me, I achieved
the American dream.”
This story is part of a biweekly
series containing
edited chapters of Sharon
Hollins’ 2021 book
“Crossings: Untold Stories
of Undocumented
Migrants.” Each chapter
of the book tells a
different story of an
immigrants’ journey
to the United States.