many families are choosing to leave their homes in central america for the unknown, a life in the u.s. some are facing life-or-death situations and are risking everything to come here. cnn s nick valencia went to the border to meet families trying to seek asylum. reporter: through the tree brush, border patrol agent robert rodriguez spot what is he says are three smugglers preparing to launch a raft filled with migrants. he says they re filming us. along with agent rodriguez, we follow the raft downstream. it s there we see this, six central american migrants, some of those who are on the raft, one of them traveling with his father is just 3 years old. what are you looking for
find their children after they were separated. meanwhile the trump administration is facing a deadline from a federal judge to reunite the children separated from their parents by the end of july. but even when the threat of separation loomed, that did not stop people from taking the risk to enter the u.s. nick valencia has been talking with migrants from central america. reporter: through the tree brush, this agent spots what he says are three smugglers preparing to launch a raft filled with migrants. he says they are filming us. along with the agent, we followed the raft downstream. it is there we see this, six central american migrantmigrant of them traveling with his father is just three years old. what are you looking for here? [ speaking foreign language ] he s asking for asylum. he says strangers would show up
we were there on the u.s. mexico border as smugglers brought them across the rio grande. through the tree brush, robert rodriguez spots what he thought were three smugglers about to launch a raft filled with migrants. he says they re film iing us. along with agent. rod:, we followed the raft. it s there, we see this. six central american migrants, some who are on the raft. one of them traveling with his father is just 3 years old. okay. what are you looking for here? he s asking for asylum. strangers would show up to his house, ask for money and they would threaten him in front of his child as they kept threaten to kill him. he said they would even kill the 3-year-old. we know there s people here very much against illegal immigration. what do you say to them?
everything to come to america. nick valencia was there on the u.s./mexico border as smugglers brought them across the rio grande. reporter: through the tree brush, border patrol agent spots what he says are three smugglers, preparing to launch a raft filled with migrants. they are filming us he says. along with agent rodriguez, we followed the raft down sfreem. it is there we see six central american migrants, some who were on the raft, one traveling with his father is just 3 years old. what are you looking for here? [ speaking foreign language ] he s asking for asylum. strangers would show up to his house, they would ask for money. and they would threaten him in front of his child, threatening to kill him and they were even he said they would even kill the 3-year-old. you know there is people here
challenging with variety of terrain. honestly. and want to make sure that stayed out of the two-mile radius. officers have around the zone. they were looking in just yesterday. and i can tell you when we got up above the air, we were 500 feet above the ground. what you can see here is the chain of lakes. sort of connects this community. and the idea there is heavy tree brush. you know, some neighborhoods they clear cut a neighborhood. here what we saw was dense woods. surrounding homes. there were some neighborhood where it was hard to make out the roofs of homes. we hovered over the backyard. to see what we could find. you can tell there were some homes. vacant. battered down. there were boats back there. pools that were covered. you can imagine the officers going through the backyard. from neighborhood to neighborhood. maybe from house to house. and not having someone to knock on the door to ask them a question. then the thick brush.