He stood at the edge of the Rio Grande, mustering the nerve to wade in. It was early in the morning, and days of rain had swelled the river, amplifying the danger of trying to cross. On the opposite bank, he could see Eagle Pass, a border town roughly midway between Big Bend and Brownsville. Alan Paredes Salazar, a stocky 37-year-old, was athletic—a former player in a lower division of Peru’s professional soccer league. And yet as he faced the wild rapids, it mattered more that he was a weak swimmer who feared deep water. In Peru, where he had eked out a living selling T-shirts and working other odd jobs in coastal towns, he had steered clear of the ocean. But desperation drives people…
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