The minutes dragged into hours on Wednesday night as Jose Gregorio Gonzalez tossed and turned through the night. At 5 a.m. the next day, he was scheduled to donate his kidney to his younger brother, Alfredo Pacheco, who was also restless.

By 2 a.m. the two couldn’t stay in bed any longer and began to get ready for a day that they thought would never come.

“ Es un milagro, porque todo estaba contra nosotros ,” Gonzalez said. “It’s a miracle, because all odds were against us.”

His mind raced back to the nights he spent locked inside an immigration detention center earlier this year, convinced he would soon be deported, while his younger brother pleaded with ICE officials to let him stay.

Gonzalez was Pacheco’s only hope to keep living after being diagnosed with terminal renal failure.

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