JUAREZ, Mexico (Border Report) – Like other merchants in his Guatemala City neighborhood, Luis Coronado initially dismissed monetary demands from a street gang targeting them.

Then a store owner, his son and an employee were murdered two doors down the street. Nobody got arrested.

The next time gang members came to demand more money than he made in a month, Coronado took his wife and children to relatives in a small town, and he set off to request asylum in the United States.

Along the way, he saw a travel companion fall off a cargo train and get torn to pieces; then criminals kidnapped and beat him in Mexico until they realized he had nothing but the clothes on his back.

“They made me suffer a lot," the Guatemalan migrant said. "I don’t wish that on anyone.”

On Friday, he walked from

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