--https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/child-migrants-surge-unaccompanied-central-america/
Why are they coming here?
Here is just one of a thousand stories about, "Why?"
He’d grown up mostly on the streets in Guatemala City, his abusive father a crack addict and his mother everywhere but around, leaving him with a thin, green-eyed prostitute friend who would sometimes have sex with johns right there next to him. He’d seen robberies, stabbings, shootings; he’d never once set foot in a classroom. Eventually he started making a little money selling clothes and makeup in the city’s colonial district. It wasn’t much, but even so the Barrio 18 street gang took notice and started asking for a cut. When Adrián didn’t budge, they pockmarked his tiny stall with bullets. It was time to leave.
In a doorless desert safe house in northwestern Mexico, the drug traffickers sized him up—17 years old, 1,700 miles from home, gay, alone—and asked if he was too scared to strap on a load of marijuana and walk across the border into Arizona.
The kid paused to consider his options. He didn’t have any. Okay, he told them. He’d do it.
On the train to deliver the drugs and hopefully find peace in his life at last.
