SAN MARTIN JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala — Ana Matzutz and her teenage son, Esduardo, stood across from each other at the family's fruit stand, arguing about their likely migration north.

The other half of their family — father and daughter — made it to the United States just days before in search of opportunity and away from gangs. They await Ana and Esduardo in New Jersey, and Ana, 32, considers it her duty to reunite the family. But Esduardo, 14, wants to finish school and study law.

Ana Matzutz, 32, has a debate with her son, Esduardo, 14, on January 27, 2019 about whether to leave for the United States where her husband and daughter live. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

"I don't want to go," he said. "I want to stay." The long silence that ensues finally breaks.

"And do what?" Ana asked, referring to a law degree. "It's just a paper with no job."

Their struggle, one that Esduardo later confessed will go his mother's way, plays out against a tense standoff 5,000 miles north, one led by an American president who has pledged to thwart illegal

immigration and secure the U.S.-Mexico border by building a wall. President Donald Trump plans to make his case for a barrier again in El Paso on Monday at his first campaign rally of the year. What's needed, say his critics, including U.S. legislators who visited El Paso Saturday, are more judges, lawyers, resources to move the asylum process along, and more economic investments in Central America to generate jobs for locals and help stop the exodus.

Trump's policy of dramatically slowing the flow of asylum-seekers into the U.S. — a practice known as "metering" and in coordination with Mexican authorities — means migrants who travel north from here to reach the U.S.-Mexican border must wait in Mexico days, weeks and even months before any chance of processing by U.S. border agents. U.S. officials have said the process is aimed at preventing ports of entry from overflowing.

The U.S. move has led to the latest cat-and-mouse game along the border. Rather than be stuck in large itinerant communities for an undetermined amount of time and face prospects of drug violence, smugglers are telling potential clients here that they will move them — "human cargo" — through barren areas along the border, making it easier to turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents without wasting time in cities like Ciudad Juarez.

"By restricting asylum at the ports of entry, smugglers can make the pitch: Don't wait there, we can get you into the U.S. in a matter of hours or days," said Theresa Brown, an immigration expert with the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Border Patrol agents check for footprints near a "Normandy"-style border fence at the U.S.-Mexico border in Antelope Wells, N.M. (John Moore / Getty Images)

"This is the newest market, if you will, of desperate people who will try to get to the United States, and they [smugglers] are sophisticated in terms of how they are marketing themselves and using what they hear and see from the U.S. government," Brown said.

Overall, apprehensions along the border have dropped significantly from an estimated 1.6 million in 2000 to fewer than 400,000 in fiscal year 2018. But the total number of migrants seeking asylum jumped from an estimated 5,000 in 2008 to some 97,000 last year, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Since October, at least 27 large migrant groups of 100 or more, most of them families from Guatemala, have turned themselves in to border agents near desolate Antelope Wells, N.M., about 170 miles from El Paso.

On Friday, 290 additional migrants, many from Guatemala, turned themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents. One Guatemalan child showed "signs of an illness," according to a Border Patrol news release. This is the same area where Guatemalan Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7, died in December in U.S. custody.

"The bottom line is that we have a deeply flawed immigration system, smugglers and traffickers know the flaws well, and they seek to exploit these vulnerabilities in the law, as well as physical vulnerabilities to enter and remain in the country illegally," DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said by email.

Once in the U.S., a rising number of these migrants are making their way to North Texas, joining friends and relatives who have preceded them and found work steady enough to support their families left behind. This activates what sociologist and anthropologist David M. Stoll at Middlebury College in Vermont argues, in a piece for The American Interest magazine, are "remittances [that] set off vicious cycles of debt and crime that push more Central Americans north."

Here in the tiny, picturesque community of San Martin, tucked into the foothills of Chimaltenango in central Guatemala, news of the quick journey that Ana Matzutz's husband and daughter made into the U.S. — an 11-day trip — generated instant buzz.

A woman in traditional indigenous dress walks the streets of San Martin Jilotepeque, Guatemala. She confuses a visitor for a smuggler and asks him to leave her alone. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Smugglers have been boasting openly about their latest feat, how they have again outfoxed U.S. immigration authorities at the border.

The asking price to reach the border is the equivalent of about $6,000, according to several people here, including Dina Muzuzt, 36, Ana's cousin. She's full of curiosity and in disbelief about how easy it was for Ana's husband and daughter to cross into the United States.

"If you have a child, they say you get into the U.S. Is that true?" asked Muzuzt. "Eleven days. Really?"

She said the same smugglers are hounding Ana to abandon their community and head north.

Dina's own husband left 12 years ago and has not returned. Some families say the price and sacrifice is worth it, even those who deeply miss sons, daughters and spouses who now live thousands of miles away.

Lillian Martinez, 64, is one of those. She has four sons in the United States, including one in Houston and one in Dallas. She hasn't seen them in nearly a decade, she said, as her eyes tear up. But they send her money every two weeks, and "that's how I survive," she said.

Remittances to Guatemala, estimated to exceed $9 billion this year, account for the largest source of foreign exchange in this country.

"We're losing our country," Martinez said. "Every person who leaves takes a piece of our soul with them. And now, the children are leaving too. What will be left of us?"

Standing nearby in the open-air market as Martinez spoke, Ana Matzutz stared out into the distance, looking away from a Catholic church that is under renovation with monies from abroad. She lowered her voice, away from her son, and confessed that she'd prefer to stay in Guatemala. But she wants her son to be raised by his father, too, and she misses her daughter, who turned 15 during the journey north.

"I don't know that we have much of an option," she said.

Lillian Martinez, 64, hasn't seen her sons in nine years since they departed for the United States. But she says their absence helps her survive economically via the remittances she receives bi-monthly. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Since her husband left, Matzutz said, she and Esduardo have been targeted twice by extortionists who suspect she receives money from her husband.

She said that in January, not long after her husband left, gunmen fired warning shots into the roof of a truck she was in and, along with other passengers, forced her to hand over her money. "They put their hands in your undergarments and bra," she said. "What do we have left when bad people rob us? This is what we live from. This is how we eat."

Despite such experiences, it isn't difficult to persuade Guatemalans to take those risks. The country is plagued with poverty, rampant corruption, high malnutrition rates and a weak rule of law that's turned this tiny nation of an estimated 17.5 million people into a place where criminals operate with near full impunity, said Julie Lopez, a journalist who co-authored a study about criminal gangs for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center.

Although establishing a direct correlation between drug violence and migration is difficult, Lopez said, "gang violence, extortions and poverty" remain the driving forces in pushing people north.

"It's a very troubled country that isn't providing to the vast percentage of its population what any government should be providing," said Sue Patterson, a former U.S. Consul General in Antigua. After retiring from the foreign service in 1996 in Guatemala, she started WINGS, a nonprofit that helps rural and indigenous women with reproductive health and family planning.

Additionally, the job market is too small for them, she added. Each year, up to 170,000 Guatemalans enter the workforce, though only some 40,000 jobs are created, according to Guatemalan government statistics. More than 60 percent of residents live in poverty.

Workers at the open-air market in San Martin Jilotepeque pack up to leave. The church is undergoing renovation with help from remittances sent from abroad, including families in Texas. (Alfredo Corchado / Staff)

Those numbers represent opportunity for smugglers, who make false promises to potential clients that they will get them to the border safely, especially if they travel with a minor and turn them in to U.S. authorities.

Prices vary. For instance, young women are charged more because they require more protection from sexual predators. If they can't afford the price, they're ordered to bring condoms with them for the journey, said Luis Demetrio Ayfan Zarceño, executive director at the Guatemala City-based Institute of Social Protection.

He said many Guatemaltecos end up handing over deeds to their land, or owing lifelong debts to the human traffickers and their families. "It's undeniable that the role of smugglers is critical," he added.

In San Martin Jilotepeque, the goodbyes have been going on for generations.

At first, mostly men left for East Coast cities from Rhode Island to New Jersey. These days, more families make the arduous trip, and their destinations extend well beyond the East Coast and include Dallas.

Hortensia is a baker from San Martin who arrived in Dallas last summer. She asked that her full name not be used, or where she works, because she's running away from an extortionist in San Martin, where she still has family and awaits a court date.

"This isn't a fun adventure," she said. "Not one day goes by when I don't miss my town, my family, my neighbors and friends. But if you're born Guatemalteco, you're almost doomed to migrate."