"That could have been me."

That's why Alma Artigua attended the candlelight vigil Thursday night in downtown Huntsville, an event to remember children separated from their families in the immigration border crisis in Texas.

That's why she joined about 150 other people in Big Spring Park who held signs, nodded along to points of emphasis by speakers and waved the 2018 version of lighted candles - which have no flame.

That could have been her. Or her younger brother. Or her still even younger two cousins.

They were all part of a family that fled the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.

"That's why I'm here," Artigua said in an interview with AL.com after the vigil ended. "The way they are treating those kids, that could have been me in the 80s. It's just not fair.

"I mean, Ronald Reagan saved us because he gave us amnesty. That's how we got to be residents and, now, citizens in the United States."

She said her family crossed the Rio Grande, entered the country illegally and were forgiven when President Reagan in 1986 granted amnesty to illegal immigrants arriving before 1982 as part of a sweeping immigration bill.

But the vigil Thursday was not so much about politics and policy as about children separated from their families, according to Monica Evans, one of the event organizers.

While President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that ended the practice of separated children from their family, it did not address the 2,300 children scattered across the country while their parents or guardians await prosecution at the border.

The Washington Post reported Friday that customs officials are struggling to reunite children with their families.

"We came to represent the children being mistreated," said DeeDee Lyles, who attended the vigil with Artigua.

The audience at the vigil heard from Kathy Deganis, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic while her husband came from Argentina, as well as Rev. Gregory Bentley of the Huntsville chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Crowd members then swayed during a playing of "We Are The World" - the musical superstar conglomeration of 1985 that raised money for famine in Africa.

"The people from Central America, they're not coming for jobs," Evans said afterward. "They're trying to save their lives."

That's the scenario that Artigua described for her family.

"That was the reason that we moved was that my brother got killed in El Salvador in the civil war and then they sent a message to my parents that they were going to kill them and they were going to kill us," she said. "So we didn't have any choice but to sell everything and move here without anything. I mean, nothing. Just our pants and a t-shirt."

Artigua said she has lived in Huntsville for more than 20 years, though most of their family resides in Houston. Her children are now grown, both college graduates and a daughter who is a doctor.

"I was talking with my brother, we almost cry when we saw those kids," Artigua said. "That could have been us. My brother was seven years old. We lived this."