XAVIER ZARAGOZA/The Daily Dispatch

They had walked for about five hours before they were picked up by Border Patrol agents.

But even before that, their smuggler had abandoned them.

Apparently, there wasn't enough room in the vehicle that was transporting them to Phoenix, said fifty one-year-old Florinda Osoño, of Mexico City, who was traveling with her young daughter,

"But the smuggler took everything we had, our food, water and money, before they kicked us out," she said.

As Osoño and her daughter walked through the desert and back toward Highway 80, they found a 16-ounze bottle of water. They took sips of the murky liquid, all the while hoping they would be found, she said.

A Border Patrol agent who picked them up took a gallon of water from his truck and gave it to Osoño.

Osoño and her daughter, who did not give her name, paid about $2,000 to be crossed, she said.

"I'll try to cross again," she said as she drank her clean water. "I want a better life for me and my daughter."

She blamed the Mexican government for not providing work in her country.

"We work hard and the government finds a way to take what little we've got," she said. "But I want to stay here. My dream is for my daughter to have an education."

But if it's not the government taking from them, it's the smugglers that take what little they have when they cross the border, she said.

It was the first time crossing for her and her daughter and she had heard stories of smugglers robbing, and sometimes raping, their victims, she said.

"But many of us are without food and work in my country," she said. "So we look for other ways of making a living, even if it means crossing the border and facing the danger that exist there."