PHOTO STORY: DETAINED CHILDREN
NOTE: This introductory text is intended to run alongside the photographs.
Every month, thousands of undocumented teenagers are caught trying to cross into the United States. The teens travel by plane, bus and sometimes foot, thousands of miles _ often on their own _ to try to reach the United States.
After they are caught, many are sent to Mexican-run shelters along the border, staying there until they can be sent back to their families, many of them in southern Mexico.
From January through August of 2007, Mexican officials repatriated more than 20,000 teenagers, according to the National Institute of Migration. The majority of them were seeking jobs in the United States.
Ryan A. Ruiz of Cronkite News Service tells the stories of some of these teenagers in these photographs.
Fidel Mendez, 14, Joaquin Garrera Parilla, 16, Jesus Ramires, 17, and Eliel Jose, 16, watch television at the DIF shelter in Nogales. The four teenagers, from different parts of Mexico, wanted to find work in the U.S. to help support their families. Mendez, from Puebla, lived and went to school in Phoenix with his sister, aunt and uncle for eight months before he was caught and detained. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Joaquin Garrera Parilla, 16, and Raymondo Islas, 14, unfold a table for breakfast as other detainees look on. The shelter provides three meals a day. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Joaquin Garrera Parilla, 16, Fidel Mendez, 14, Raymondo Islas, 14, Aida Gomez Islas, 16, and Jesus Ramires, 17, watch as breakfast is prepared. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Aida Gomez Islas, 16, takes her breakfast plate at the DIF shelter. Aida and her cousin Raymondo, 14, from Puebla in southern Mexico, were headed to South Carolina to join Aida’s mother, who she hadn’t seen in five years, when they were caught. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
The teenagers eat mostly in silence as they concentrate on their breakfast. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Diego Fernandez, 14, left his parents and four siblings in Guatemala, where he was making $3 a day cutting beans, and headed for Columbus, Ohio, where he had heard he could find work. He took three planes to get to Sonora before crossing the desert with 16 people by foot. Fernandez was near Phoenix when he was caught. He said he paid $3,000 to make the trip. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Joaquin Garrera Parilla, 16, (right) traveled two days from the state of Michoacan to Nogales, Sonora, to reach the border. He said he will try to cross the border again when he turns 18. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
A teenager at the DIF shelter in Nogales washes off a spoon after breakfast. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Raymondo Islas, 14, of Puebla, and Eliel Jose, 16, from Oaxaca, clean their breakfast dishes at the DIF shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Many of the teenagers in the shelter are from states in southern Mexico. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
Raymondo Islas, 14, of Puebla, and Eliel Jose, 16, from Oaxaca, clean their breakfast dishes at the DIF shelter in Nogales, Sonora. Many of the teenagers in the shelter are from states in southern Mexico. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
After breakfast is finished, Eliel Jose, 16, and Joaquin Garrera Parilla, 16, fold up the table and make room for the teens to watch television. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
The teenagers spend the majority of their days watching television as they wait to return to their homes in Mexico. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)
A map hanging in the DIF shelter office illustrates how far immigrants traveling on foot from Nogales to Tucson might expect to get in day. Dots on the map represent deaths of immigrants in the Arizona desert. (Cronkite News Service Photo / Ryan A. Ruiz)