Land of Opportunity

Photo gallery Nohemi lives with the guilt of sending for her teenage son, Melvin, who disappeared somewhere along the Texas-Mexico border in June 2005. Still, she maintains her faith that he is alive.

Nohemi, now 37, laughs about the expectations she had for life in the United States: That $10-an-hour job she’d heard about? It took six years of decorating cakes, bagging shrimp and making cookies before she earned that much.

The first year she lived in a two-bedroom Day Avenue apartment with six relatives. Between the overtime Nohemi requested at work and the second job she took as a restaurant dishwasher, she put in 70, sometimes 80 hours a week.

In Honduras, the family appreciated the money she was wiring home — usually $200 a month — but her children were split up and living among the homes of three relatives.

As the second-oldest child and the only boy, Melvin was relied on to look after his younger siblings and to help work the family’s meager crops.

Though he looked younger than his years, Melvin acted like an adult, relatives said. Like his mother, he was emotionally reserved and physically strong.

“The two of them were close,” Elizabeth said. “Nohemi called him on the phone as often as she could.”

It was on the phone, in fact, that she noticed Melvin’s voice changing, a reminder that she needed to get him with her soon — before the teenage gangs in Honduras claimed him.

The family migration continued as savings for coyote fees allowed: First came Nohemi’s husband; then her oldest daughter, Wendy, 19. “The risk is greater when it’s your children, but you pray that it’s worth the risk,” Nohemi said.

Wendy made it — barely. After crossing the Rio Grande and walking four hours in the hot sun, she passed out and had to be revived by fellow travelers.

Melvin was 15 and his sister Vanessa 13 when they attempted the journey the following year. They were caught by border-patrol agents and sent back, a fate awaiting 16,000 Mexican and Honduran children trying to cross into the United States each year.

Ten months later, Vanessa finally made it to Roanoke. But Melvin kept putting it off. Like his mother, he’d dropped out in the fifth grade and, after his failed attempt to migrate, decided to help his grandfather take care of the family’s cows rather than return to school.

Was school hard? he asked his sister on the phone. (Yes.)

Were the kids nice? (Not all. A student on the bus laughed at the family’s trailer, chiding Vanessa for living in a “box.”)

Had she learned English yet? (“I’m trying, but it’s very hard,” she told Melvin.)

Nearly five years to the day that his mother left him, Melvin made his final coyote-guided attempt to sneak into the United States, accompanied by his little sisters Julissa, then 9, and Diana, 7.

On June 11, 2005, Nohemi got the call: The girls had been detained at the border, more beneficiaries of “catch and release.” A Houston relative with legal-resident status was called to pick them up and take them to Roanoke.

And Melvin, along with the coyote and a small group of young migrant men, was last seen leaving Matamoros, Mexico, for the dry Texas countryside, a milk jug of water in each hand. Because he was older and a boy, his mother feared he was more apt to be sent back to Honduras.

In a decision she would later regret, she told Melvin — via his coyote’s cellphone — to sneak in by way of the desert.

“He didn’t want to go through the desert, but our mother told him to go,” explained Julissa, now 10. “He was fine the last time we saw him. He’d been holding our hands for most of the trip.”

A few days later, the Honduran coyote called again: Melvin was sick, he told Nohemi. There were others in the group he had to tend to. They had just crossed into Texas, and the coyote had to leave Melvin behind.

Put him on the phone, Nohemi pleaded, until another male voice came on the line:

“Mama, pienso que estoy muriendo.”

Mom, I think I’m dying.

Photographer Josh Meltzer and reporter Evelio Contreras contributed to this story. Vivian Sanchez-Jones, Eufemio Rivera and Elizabeth Cedillo translated interviews with Nohemi Cedillo and other non-English-speaking relatives.

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