"Prisa, Jairo!" a young woman called urgently in Spanish to a small, dark boy of about seven.
"I am hurrying!" he muttered to himself in English. He was determined to improve his grasp on the English language before they got to Britain. He nearly tripped over something in the dark, and winced as his toe throbbed. But there wasn't time to worry about his toe. He hurried to catch up to his mother.
She reached back and grasped his hand and they crept towards the USA-Mexico border. The woman pulled herself up and took a deep breath as if steeling herself for something. She grasped Jairo's hand tightly and they strode forwards.
"Papers?" the guard asked suspiciously. Jairo wondered if he usually saw people on foot in the middle of the night.
Jairo held his breath. The only sounds were the quiet rustling of papers and bugs buzzing around the large fluorescent light above them. The guard inspected his mothers' carefully forged papers. He seemed to find them satisfactory and waved them through.
"Enjoy the United States," he said, sounding bored.
Jairo and his mother waited until they were out of sight around the corner before breaking into a run. They were free at last.