Child migrant crisis endures on Mexico’s border

His face lit up every time he mentioned his destination — the United States — but like many Central American children, Juan’s dream ended abruptly when Mexican officers caught him riding a freight train.

The willowy 16-year-old boy’s story is the same as that of thousands of minors from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala who are still crossing Mexico’s southern border alone despite a crackdown on illegal migration.

Juan was detained once before in Mexico City and deported back to Honduras months ago, but his mother urged him to grab his backpack again and navigate the perilous route north, where criminals often exploit and attack migrants.

“If they kill me, they kill me, and if I stay alive, I just keep going forward,” Juan, whose name was changed for security reasons, said after a failed attempt to hop on the train known as “La Bestia,” which is moving faster these days to prevent migrants from hitching a ride.

“I want to escape my economic situation and the violence. I want to flee the gangs, the drugs, because if I return to Honduras, they can kill me,” he said after walking in scorching temperatures for days.

Initially, he had managed to “only” be robbed in Guatemala, where his shoes and clothes were stolen at gunpoint.

But his trip came to a sudden halt when migration agents raided the train at around midnight recently near Palenque in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas.

This time, his face lit up — in the glare of a flashlight — as officers bundled the frightened teen and a dozen other migrants into a van that would haul him to a detention center.

(AFP)