The following is excerpted from a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article by video journalist Jessica Koscielniak. The above film by Duy Linh Tu was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Yenny Carranza sits with her 3-year-old daughter, Monse, under a thorny bush that overlooks a tent city taking over the plaza in Matamoros, Mexico. On this sweltering afternoon, it’s the only place she can find shade within view of her tent.

Carranza, a Honduran migrant, is one of hundreds of asylum seekers living at the foot of the Gateway International Bridge hoping to be granted asylum in the United States. Their living conditions are deteriorating as the tent city grows in the border town just south of Brownsville, Texas.

She has called the plaza in Matamoros home since they requested asylum at the U.S. southern border in August.

The journey north was treacherous. Carranza said she was kidnapped with her family and held for 17 days in Reynosa, Mexico.

Read the full article on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram website.