[haylem]

That grandfather and two of his brothers left [...] with no plan [...]. They were helped by strangers and survived. Their mother however, along with two other siblings, had a plan. They had a deal with a smuggler [...] and all 3 of them died in deportation. Lesson: each person who has information on you represents an additional chance for it to be leaked.

This puzzles me... The paragraph clearly states that the grandfather had contacts with strangers (and we can then assume there was some exchange of information of some kind), and the ending was positive, whereas another exchange with a single point of contact had a negative outcome. But goes on to present as a lesson that the chance of a negative outcome increases with the number of contacts.

I see the point the author is trying to make, but I think this part fails to prove it satisfyingly. It either doesn't prove anything, or it's missing key information (shared information with the strangers and the smugglers) to support the point. To me, it proves that luck (and maybe the grand-father's ability to be a good judge of character in picking which strangers to rely on) were more likely deciding factors.

(Or that having no plan helps. But that's for a different perspective.)