downloads folder recovery

My 2019 iMac (running Catalina) crashed unexpectedly and the OS got fouled up. I can't boot up from the internal drive, nor repair it, nor seem to be able to reinstall Catalina (the install locks up at the end after hours of waiting for it to finish). I was able to boot with a USB running Mojave however, and I can see the old drive just fine. I've even started copying files over to an external drive so I can eventually wipe the internal drive clean and start over.

But I have some needed files in my Downloads folder. When I go into my old user folder, the Downloads folder appears as an alias which doesn't launch anything. Is the Downloads folder only visible based on the start-up drive (in this case it's the bootable USB)? Is it showing up as an alias because I'm trying to access files on a drive that had Catalina running on it with a drive that is running Mojave? Did the Downloads folder suddenly disappear? Is there a hidden spot where those files are secretly hiding?

Any ideas would be much appreciated! Thanks