Beginning around sunset, Houston-based photographer Go Nakamura chronicles the final stretch for migrants crossing into the United States after a grueling, weeks-long journey. Groups of people, mostly hailing from Honduras and El Salvador, and including small children, arrive from across the river in inflatable rafts to an uncertain fate: entry or denial. “Sometimes I get a little emotional when I think of their lives,” Nakamura says of people forced to “abandon their own country.” It’s different, he says, from his family moving to the U.S. from Japan when he was a teenager. “We can go back to our country anytime we want,” he says, adding that “they have to give up everything to come to the United States.” Nakamura’s photos—taken near Roma, Texas, from April 12 through 15—capture the human struggle playing out at the U.S.–Mexico border that can get overshadowed by the politics and outrage surrounding it.
Disembarking from an inflatable raft after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, U.S. April 13, 2021.
Go Nakamura
Asylum-seeking migrants on a raft that turned back to the Mexican side and did not land on the U.S. side of the river. April 8, 2021.
Go Nakamura/Reuters.
Families disembarking from an inflatable raft in Roma, Texas, U.S. April 14, 2021.
Go Nakamura
An asylum-seeking migrant child with special needs cries as his mother tries to comfort him after crossing the Rio Grande river. April 14, 2021.
Go Nakamura
Families passed under a barbed wire fence while being escorted by a local church group to the location where they turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. April 16, 2021.
Go Nakamura/Reuters.
The families were found by a local church group at an open field after they got lost on their way to turn themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol. April 16, 2021.
Go Nakamura/Reuters.
Central American migrants apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrols after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Havana, Texas, U.S. April 14, 2021.
Go Nakamura
Asylum-seeking migrants’ families from Guatemala and El Salvador rest on the ground while waiting for the U.S. Border Patrols to show up after crossing the Rio Grande river into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas, U.S. April 12, 2021.
Go Nakamura