Last June, 13-year-old Yashua Cantillano and his 11-year-old brother, Alinhoel, left their uncle's home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, with a change of clothes in plastic bags, some snacks, water and their mother's phone number scribbled on a piece of paper.
Their guide and protector? Seventeen-year-old Sulmi Cantillano, their step-sister.
With the help of a smuggler, or coyote, Sulmi says, they got to the Mexican border city of Reynosa about 11 miles south of McAllen, Texas. They crossed the Rio Grande and turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol.
In the past year, about 56,900 unaccompanied minors have made their way to the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America. U.S. immigration officials have allowed tens of thousands of these kids to join family members or other guardians already in the United States. Nearly 1,000 are in New Orleans, like the Cantillanos kids.
[For more of this story, written by Claudio Sanchez, go to http://www.npr.org/2014/09/11/...sily-in-the-big-easy]
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