I'm going to tell a story. It's the truth hiding behind many immigrants' lives—the truth many native-born citizens fail to realize.

This is the story of my family.

There were two sides in the war—the military-led side and the left-wing group known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). Both were failing to follow the bare minimum of human rights laws, creating death squads, recruiting child soldiers, and killing innocent civilians.

The civil war of El Salvador became 12 years of terror for the innocent civilians, including my mom and her family.

They grew up on a farm and had their own business. All their friends and family members lived near the area and they loved everything about their place. Nothing was missing and my mother's family had deep roots there, so there were no intentions of leaving.

Everything was picture perfect for them until the war began.

That is when everything seemed to start falling apart.

As the war moved forward, soldiers of both sides began to take advantage of their authority. They killed innocent civilians who were neutral during the war, raped women and young girls, destroyed homes, and took young boys to create child soldiers out of them. No one was really safe and no one really had anywhere to go.

My mother came from a family of five girls. Being the second youngest, she was a preteen at the time of the war.

As the war went on, people began to target each other and claim that those who were neutral were actually a part of either the military side or the FMLN side. Since there were no laws being followed at this point and both sides were taking advantage of their authority, if those claims came with some sort of compensation, soldiers would take an innocent civilian's life away.

They came searching for my mother's father.

An anonymous person had targeted my grandfather, and soldiers from both sides searched for him. They were banging on my grandfather's door, yelling for him to come out. His wife and five daughters were in the household, yelling, crying, and scared knowing that the soldiers would not be leaving without searching for my grandfather.

My grandmother rushed her daughters out of the way, trying to get them out of harm's way as much as she could. As the soldiers broke down the door, my grandfather threw himself under one of the cots his family slept on as a last resort since there was nowhere else to run or hide in their small house.

As the soldiers scavenged through the tiny house, all my mother and her sisters could do was scurry every which way to avoid the soldiers. They cried in horror watching the soldiers destroy everything that belonged to them, taking their money and other family belongings with them. My grandpa was still under the cot, tensely waiting for the soldiers to find him and kill him.

The soldiers grabbed my grandmother and demanded to know where my grandfather was.

She denied time and time again that she knew his whereabouts.

Time and time again they beat her with their guns. Trying to make my grandmother talk, they tried to take the oldest daughter, but my grandmother fought and pulled for her daughter. Once the other soldiers had taken what seemed to be every single valuable item from the tiny house, they let go of my grandmother and her daughter and left the house destroyed.

Miraculously, they did not find my grandfather, but my mother's family knew they would be back and no longer could they stay in their home.

So, they had to run.

Run from everything my mother and her family had grown up to love and cherish. Run from their farm that they had worked so hard to create, run from their family-owned business that they were so proud of. Run and leave other friends and family members behind. They left, not of their own will, but to save their lives. My mother's family never wanted to come to the United States, they were happy and rooted where they were.

They had everything they could ask for, but because of the war and because the very next day did not seem to be a guarantee, they decided to run. So they did. They ran and decided to never look back. They ran with what they could carry on their backs, and in the process of running, they had to separate into different directions to stay alive. That part of the story will be saved to be told for another time.

There is so much to this story that I leave out, but I write this piece in hopes that others will understand the struggles that immigrants truly go through. True reasons as to why immigrants cross the border. To help others understand that many times it is a life or death situation, and crossing that border does not signify that we are here to take jobs or to ruin a country.

To cross that border signifies that you have cheated death, saved your life, saved your family's life, and can start a new beginning.

Everyone deserves that.