Desperate to escape violence and unrest in their home countries, many Central American families choose to take a perilous route through Mexico into the United States. The New Yorker investigates how children trying to cross the border are kidnapped for extortion but their parents are afraid to call the police, for fear of outing themselves as undocumented immigrants.
From the story:
“Fear of the police can loom as large as fear of captors, particularly in parts of the country where law enforcement is believed to detain undocumented people who come forward to report a crime. One person who did contact the police was Sonia Avila, a woman living in Texas whose teenage son, Franklin, reached Arizona from Honduras in 2011, only to be abducted by men posing as good Samaritans and held captive in a stash-house bedroom. Franklin’s kidnappers phoned Avila, demanding fifteen hundred dollars. Otherwise, they told her, they would chop off Franklin’s ears, or kill him.”
Read the full story, which appeared in the April 27 issue of the New Yorker magazine, here.