Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario
Rating = ****

The author won a Pulitzer for her newspaper reporting in The LA Times about Central 
American immigration to the US. Consider this book the extended version of that 
reporting. The journey is harrowing, with kids as young as 8 or 10 leaving Honduras 
headed North to the US, often searching for their mothers's, who had gone North years 
earlier to earn enough money to support their kids from afar. The journey involves 
extended stretches riding on top of trains, with young kids dying or losing limbs from 
a fall just about every day. They also have to dodge gangs, corrupt police, the Mexican 
immigration police, and legit cops. Along the way they get help from churches and 
locals who sympathize with their plight. Even if they make it to the US and find their 
family, they live fearing being deported daily. That fear is probably much more real 
these days versus when the book was written 20 years ago.

You'll learn a lot about immigration, and you'll also understand why Trump's send them 
all back strategy cannot work. Enrique failed 8 or 9 times before finally making it 
into the US. Conditions are so bad in many places in Central America that the risk of 
death pales against the misery of staying home. Most of these folks are not criminals; 
they are refugees. And they should be treated as such.