Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Esperanza Rodriguez, center, sits in her home surrounded by her family. (Adriane Jaeckle / El Paso Times)

The trains were the scariest. That's what Esperanza Rodriguez, 53, and her 33-year old daughter, Esperanza "Espy" Belmontes, recall about the many times they crossed into the United States more than a decade ago before gaining legal residency.

Although they faced strict Border Patrol agents and the deep, cold currents of the Rio Grande, the worst part of the trip was crossing the train yard that stretches through South El Paso. There, Belmontes' young feet ran past vagrants and climbed between the cars of slowly rumbling trains. Once aboard, she'd jump down on the other side and sprint toward Segundo Barrio and a day of helping her mother clean homes.

Rodriguez made the commute daily for about five years. The escape from Mexico's lower wages was how she battled poverty, and it's how many Mexican nationals who work in El Paso still do.

"We had to do it because that was the source of jobs she could get," Belmontes said. "A day (of pay) here was like a week over there."

The money was good, but not great. When employers paid -- and some families took advantage of Rodriguez's undocumented status and didn't -- she got $10 to $20 for a day's worth of cleaning and ironing. In the 1980s, the wages kept the divorced mother of four on a dangerously tight budget.

Some days she couldn't get to work to earn her $20. When the Border Patrol was clamping down, she'd be pulled from the river, she'd wait until agents took her fingerprints, and and then she'd be sent home.

"Some (agents) are very tough, with very hard personalities," she said.

Others were not. One agent took her and another woman to his home after learning that Rodriguez had four children. His wife prepared the women breakfast before the agent dropped them off in El Paso, each with a $20 bill.

Rodriguez said it was the compassionate people she met who helped make her life in El Paso possible.

Among them was one woman who saw her need and rented her a home in Segundo Barrio, putting a final end to her cross-border commute.

"This woman opened many doors for me," Rodriguez said. "It's because of her, really, that I am here."

Another of her supporters was her second husband. She said he was a very kind man, who helped the family become legal U.S. residents before the two went their separate ways years ago.

Becoming "legal" changed things for Rodriguez. "I could look for work and say my own price."

Rodriguez continued cleaning for people who paid well, but she eventually took a job doing kitchen work at a Dairy Queen in the Lower Valley. The minimum-wage employment was better work, but it didn't put her above the poverty line.

"They would cut hours because there weren't customers," Rodriguez said. "The most I'd earn was $120 to $180 every 15 days."

To supplement her income, Rod riguez cared for neighbors' children and also sold her own homemade burritos and tamales.

Life in Segundo Barrio wasn't easy.

Belmontes said the neighborhood, where they would witness fights and drug use, was a tough place for her brothers and sister to grow up. But her mother pushed the children to take school seriously and eventually moved the family to the Kennedy Brothers apartment complex in the Lower Valley.

In the years that followed, Belmontes, now a married mother of two girls, has also pushed herself forward. She works for the sheriff's department and often comes into contact with undocumented migrants who have been detained for crossing the border illegally.

She sympathizes with their plight.

"Over there (Juárez) they don't pay; that's why they have to do that," she said. "Especially when I see kids, that breaks my heart."

Belmontes said she is firm but kind to the migrants she meets.

"I'm never going to forget my past," she said. "It wasn't bad. It was just part of life."

This article was published in Week 3 of the El Paso Times Poverty Series.