When I left the migrant caravan in early November, it was on a dusty road leading to Veracruz and hope was sinking. Most were exhausted and sick from the journey. The road ahead, leading to America, was rife with sicarios and kidnappers and men who trafficked in human organs – or so they’d heard. Many had turned back toward Honduras and Guatemala, surrendering to the murderous violence that had put them on the run. In doing so, a good many had surely signed their own death sentence.

I left wondering how those who remained would even make it to the next town, much less another 2,200 miles to Tijuana and the US. And yet weeks later, I would reunite with two of those families in a quiet suburb of San Diego, and regard it as a miracle.

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Both families have children with special needs that require serious medical attention: Maria Caceres’s son Javier, who is 15, has Down’s syndrome, epilepsy and a heart condition. He suffered seizures twice while I followed them and routinely vomited and passed out on the highway.

Juan Antonio’s six-year-old daughter Lesly has cerebral palsy. She cannot walk or speak and was confined to a rickety stroller. Loud noises and rumbling trucks caused her anxiety and sent her into convulsions; the girl hardly slept and was miserable.

Maria and Juan – both from Honduras – were fleeing not only poverty, but horrific violence. Gang members in San Pedro Sula had extorted Maria’s two brothers for months. When they were unable to pay, she said, the gang burned down their house and butchered them with machetes. “My brothers had no money because they were helping me with Javier,” she’d told me. “They died helping my son.” The killers had even attended the funeral to send Maria a message that she was next.

Days later, she’d taken Javier and latched onto the caravan.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Juan Antonio’s daughter Lesly, rests in the bed she shares with her father at their host’s home. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

Juan had been a security guard in Ocotepeque, in addition to working in the coffee fields to pay Lesly’s medical bills. Gangs also controlled his neighborhood. One night while he was at work, he said, a gang leader broke into his home and raped his wife. Lesly had sat there and watched. When Juan went to the police, the gang threatened to kill him. The day the caravan passed through town, he hoisted Lesly in his arms and started walking. It wasn’t until reaching Mexico, after some 300 miles, that someone gave him a stroller.

For both families, the journey through Oaxaca had been punishing. On my last day on the trail, after a huge storm, I’d left them sleepless and depressed along the highway. Juan had been considering turning back. Maria wasn’t sure if Javier could even walk.

Once home, I managed to keep in touch with Juan through occasional WhatsApp messages. But Maria’s phone wasn’t working, and as the caravan began to fade from the news after the midterm elections, I heard nothing.

Then on 25 November, I saw a photo of Maria and Javier flash across my Twitter feed. They were in Tijuana and had been caught up in the group of migrants who’d rushed the border fence, only to be repelled by US border patrol agents. They’d both taken a face full of teargas. In the photo, Javier struggled to breath as Maria rubbed his back. Tears and snot streaked his face.

As Donald Trump renewed his ire against the caravan, his administration announced migrants seeking asylum would have to wait in Mexico until they applied. The process would likely take months, perhaps years. I thought, there’s no way they’re getting in.

But then, two weeks ago, I get a message from Juan saying they’d made it. The four of them were in Bonita, California, just outside of San Diego.

On 16 December, I caught a flight to meet them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Juan Antonio wheels his daughter Lesly into the backyard of their host’s home so they can eat in the garden together. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

I find them at a small three-bedroom house with a chain-link fence. Juan greets me at the door, and immediately I notice the change. He looks healthy and rested. Gone are the dark circles under his eyes and the pinched expression of dread. He’s also got a haircut. He takes me over to Lesly, who reclines in a proper wheelchair. Her face is bright and full of expression, and her body seems loose and relaxed, no longer spooled tight from anxiety. As I greet her, Javier rounds the corner and wraps me in a bear hug. Maria follows behind, all smiles.

The person responsible for them getting to the US is Mark Lane, a burly guy from San Diego who runs an organization called Minority Humanitarian Foundation. Hanging out in the Tijuana shelters where migrants stay, Mark seeks out the neediest cases and taps his growing network of church and aid organizations to provide housing, medical care and jobs.

One of these groups includes This is About Humanity, based out of Los Angeles. Its connection with professional athletes, Hollywood actors, and social media influencers has drummed up $200,000 for Mark and other immigration not-for-profits. An event in November at the home of actor Henry Winkler raised $76,000 for Immigrant Defenders Law Center and other organizations.

In early December, Mark was visiting the shelter known as El Barretal when someone approached him. A boy and his mother who were very ill, they said. On the second floor of a dark warehouse, amid tight rows of tents and sleeping pallets, Lane discovered Maria and Javier. Maria was shivering with fever and coughing uncontrollably. Javier stroked her back, visibly terrified. “Don’t cry, Mamita,” he repeated through his own tears.

The journey through Oaxaca, where I had met them, had been arduous and frightening. But what came after I left was much worse – and it began with Maria vomiting blood.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maria Caceres washes dishes after lunch. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

She’d started getting sick in Veracruz, a kind of ghostly fever that made her feel separate from her own body. At the camp in Mexico City, she coughed until her mouth was full of blood, and then came more. She had no medicine. She couldn’t think straight, and there was Javier to worry about. One day while looking for food, Javier ran up to a stranger and wrapped him in a hug. The man was from El Salvador, part of the caravan, and must have been high or drunk, Maria thinks, because he wheeled around and smashed Javier with his fist. The blow landed at the base of the boy’s skull and knocked him out cold. A mob formed and attacked the man.

They would’ve killed him had the police and ambulance not arrived, who arrested the Salvadoran and treated Javier.

After leaving the capital, the rides were few. They ate maybe once a day, with Javier taking his medicine on an empty stomach and vomiting bile on the road. After maybe a week of walking, she doesn’t quite recall, a truck driver took them all the way to Mexicali, where the weather turned cold. So many migrants were sick, she remembers.

They stayed in a shelter run by a church. But the pastor, a young tattooed man they called El Gordo, made them each pay 50 pesos a day if they wanted to eat. Desperate, Maria forced herself to stand out in traffic and beg.

“I have a boy,” she told drivers. “Can someone please help?” She wasn’t alone. Up and down the road were women begging for pesos to feed their kids.

An older lady soon approached and offered Maria a job cleaning. She and Javier awoke early the next morning and walked three hours to the woman’s house, where she spent all day scrubbing toilets and washing laundry, with Javier doing his best to help. At the end of the day, the woman offered only 150 pesos, or about seven dollars. Not wanting to spend on a bus, they walked back to camp, Maria shivering with fever. At work the next day, she became sick in the bathroom with more blood coming in waves. The woman heard her retching through the door and told her never to come back. They returned to Mexicali where Maria begged in traffic. At her lowest point, she stood in the road vomiting blood while cars swerved around her.

Somehow in her haze, they managed to finally escape Mexicali and reunite with the caravan.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maria Caceres poses for a portrait with her son, Javier, Bonita, California. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

Finally making it to Tijuana, they ended up in Benito Juarez, the open-air sports complex turned shelter where some 6,000 migrants squeezed together in a squalor of mud, lice and raw sewage.

On their second day, a friend told Maria how to apply for asylum. She and Javier walked to the San Ysidro border crossing where she encountered an American agent, whom Javier instantly tackled in a hug. Maria shrieked, but luckily the officer was flattered and even gave Maria 150 pesos to buy the kid some lunch. Then he took them both into an office where Maria entered her name to be called for an application. They assigned her a number.

She was 1,537th in line.

We’ll call you, they told her.

She returned every morning for three weeks to check her status, though it hardly budged. It was on one of those days that agitators had tried storming the border fence. Someone said to Maria, “The border is open! They’re letting people in.” So she and Javier had followed the group, only to find them climbing the wall trying to pry it apart. They managed to create a small opening, she says. “Women and children first,” they shouted. Maria and Javier found themselves being pushed, but it was a trap. As soon as they reached the wall, the agitators simply leapt onto their shoulders and tried to scale the top.

American border agents, witnessing this, opened fire with teargas. A stampede ensued, and in the melee she nearly lost Javier. He was hyperventilating, about to pass out from the gas. At one point a canister landed at their feet and Maria picked it up and threw it back. It was a journalist who helped them take cover, then washed Javier’s eyes and face with water from the river.

Already migrants, discouraged by their reception and diminished by the journey, were turning themselves into Mexican immigration to self deport.

Around a week later, heavy rains flooded Benito Juarez and forced authorities to find a better shelter. It was there in El Barretal that Maria’s health took another dive. One afternoon she was sick and coughing again. She was moaning in pain, her lungs heaving, and Javier was getting scared.

It was then they looked up and saw Mark Lane.

“Maria looked awful,” Mark remembers. “I immediately became concerned that she wouldn’t get the attention she needed. Of course, there was also Javier’s needs.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maria Caceres’s son, Javier, plays with a remote control car donated anonymously to the Minority Humanitarian Foundation. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

Mark appealed to Mexican authorities to put all four of them at the front of the line. “Let me take care of them,” he said. The authorities agreed. With the help of Paola Mendoza, the director and activist, Mark appealed to US Customs and Border Protection to expedite their cases. After detaining them four days for processing, agents turned them loose on parole.

As for Juan and Lesly, it seems their luck picked up where Maria and Javier’s had left off – or what little luck there was. From Mexico City, they’d reached Tijuana in a few quick rides. At Benito Juarez, they were given indoor shelter. After my story in the Guardian ran, a Univision journalist raised money to help them, plus others donated cash along the way.

The house where Juan and Lesly stay belongs to a friend of Mark’s – part of his cabal of eager helpers. Maria and Javier stay with another friend about 10 minutes north in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood.

Currently, Mark says he’s helping 73 families in a variety of ways, from finding lawyers to assisting kids whose parents are detained. In 2014, anti-immigration advocates targeted his restaurant, Poppa’s Fresh Fish Company, after Mark and his wife, who’s from Mexico, took in a Guatemalan family who was seeking asylum. They sent death threats and hate mail and wrote fake Yelp reviews about his business. When the local media reported the story, Mark received a ton of support. But after a while it wasn’t enough and he closed the restaurant. After that, Mark doubled down on helping immigrants and people in need.

He’s helped probably a thousand other people since starting this work five years ago.

Mark estimates it will take months before Juan and Maria get an immigration hearing, and several years before their cases are finally resolved. Both were released with ankle bracelets to monitor their movements. In the meantime, he’s helping them to heal and get settled into American life. That week he’d arranged a raft of doctor appointments for both parents and kids; already Maria is taking antibiotics for her cough, and soon she’ll see someone about the bleeding. Javier is scheduled for the dentist and a heart specialist. Lesly will see a neurologist, and also start rehabilitation. “I got a friend who does dance therapy for kids with cerebral palsy,” Mark says. “How cool is that?”

And after Juan and Maria file their asylum claims, they’ll be eligible to work. “The ironworkers union is letting Juan start as an apprentice,” Mark tells me. “Nineteen bucks an hour.” While Juan works, a bus will pick up Lesly and take her to school and rehab, all of it covered through Medi-Cal, the state’s public health network. As soon as doctors examine Javier, he’ll start school at nearby Herbert Hoover High.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Juan Antonio poses for a portrait. Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

We sit on the back porch talking as the California sun cuts the morning chill. Juan wheels Lesly into a small courtyard to feed her lunch, surrounded by nightshade and drooping bougainvillea. One of Mark’s friends, Elsa Marie Collins, a cofounder of This is About Humanity, stops by with her three kids. They’d just driven down from LA and carry gifts for Javier and Lesly. The group is arranging several fundraisers for Mark, inviting celebrities and other influencers.

After the local news station ran a story about Juan and Lesly, presents for the kids started showing up on Mark’s doorstep. Javier runs out holding a remote-control monster truck and begs Mark to play. He rams it into the fence again and again, ecstatic with joy, then takes Mark’s phone and pulls up a photo of Santa Claus.

“Dude’s obsessed with Santa,” Mark whispers.

The miracle of Christmas has not been lost on the boy, nor anyone else who watches him. He takes the phone and runs to his mother, whose eyes well with tears.

“Ho! Ho! Ho! Mommy! Ho! Ho! Ho!”