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Mohammad stepped toward the riverbank and felt his stomach drop. He was somewhere in western Guatemala, traveling with a group of migrants hoping to reach the U.S. He was hungry, dehydrated and sick, with painful sores all over his body from some kind of infection.
He now faced a more pressing problem: He couldn’t swim.
He was three weeks into a brutal journey that had spanned nine countries and 4,000 miles. He was robbed four times in Brazil and Colombia, extorted by police officers in Guatemala and nearly drowned while crossing a different river, this one in Panama.