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A teenager in search of mother, atop the ‘death train’

Amid the arguments over border fences, guest worker programs and employer sanctions the personal stories of illegal immigration are often missing.

Sonia Nazario’s book Enrique’s Journey offers one family’s story to fill that gap. Released earlier this year, the book is based on a Pulitzer-Prize winning series the Los Angeles Times reporter wrote in 2003.

The impetus for the story came after Nazario learned her own housekeeper had left four children behind in Guatemala to find work in the United States. After 12 years of separation, the woman’s son takes off in search of his mother and arrives with the story of his dangerous hitchhiking journey and travel on top of Mexico’s freight trains, known as "El Tren de la Muerte."

Nazario asks the questions: "How can a mother leave her children and travel more than two thousand miles away, not knowing when or if she will ever see them again?" and then "What kind of desperation, I wondered, pushes children as young as seven years old to set out, alone, through such a hostile landscape with nothing but their wits?"

Interspersed with solid reporting – an estimated 48,000 children illegally enter the United States on their own each year – the heart of the book rests on 17-year-old Enrique, who leaves Honduras with $57 to find his mother who had left their impoverished town years earlier to work in the US and send back money for food and school.

Nazario follows Enrique on his eighth attempt. She wisely takes herself out of the story and concentrates on his compelling odyssey. It’s a 1,800-mile-long gamut of gangsters, bandits, rapists, corrupt police and immigration cops; not to mention the dangers of riding on top of moving trains which claim countless limbs and lives.

It’s an eye-opening story but also heartbreaking, when it appears by the end that the cycle of desperation and separation will repeat yet again.