Los Angeles Times, by Don Bartletti

In the vast migration that is changing the US, a Honduran boy rides a freight through Mexico. Each year thousands of undocumented Central Americans stow away for 1,500 miles on the tops and sides of trains. Some are parents desperate to escape poverty. Many are children in search of a parent who left them behind long ago. Only the brave and the lucky reach their goal. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Buzzards and children compete for scraps at the Tegucigalpa, Honduras, landfill. Boys scavenge for anything they can eat or sell. Northbound freight trains through Mexico are crowded with Hondurans fleeing poverty and in search of work or a relative in the U.S. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Richard Alberto Funez waves a toy pistol and acts like a tough guy, to the amusement of his buddy, Alexis Joel Sanchez. In Richard's other hand is a soda can full of glue. Both ten-year-old orphans are addicted to the fumes. They roam Tegucigalpa to scavenge food and beg for money. Local outreach volunteers say many street urchins were left behind by a parent who went to the U.S. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Even pauses on the trek are filled with risk as a twelve-year-old makes a daredevil leap from one freight care to another. He hopes to eventually reach San Diego, where his mother is working. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Clinging to the top of a speeding freight train migrants duck under dangerously close tree branches. Honduran stowaways call the migration route through Mexico "the beast" for its life-threatening hazards. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Groupo Beta undercover police agents grab a youth near an immigration checkpoint in Chiapas, Mexico. Along the rail line, Beta agents pursue robbers who prey upon hapless migrants. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Twelve-year-old Dennis Ivan Contrares, two weeks out of Honduras, has only his mother's San Diego phone number to go on. After a fitful night on the northbound Mexican freight he says his dreams are always the same: "find mama, go to school, learn English and help other children. I would help the street children because I walk the streets and they die in the streets." (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

A Honduran teenager wearing a school backpack gets a toehold on a moving freight train in Vera Cruz, Mexico. To avoid authorities, migrants hide until the train picks up speed. The dangerous tactic increases the chance of slipping on the gravel or falling under the wheels. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

The hands of Central American migrants and those of Mexicans passing them food meet as a train passes through Fortin de las Flores, Mexico. The simple generosity of the poor residents along the tracks through Vera Cruz state is legendary among train-riding stowaways. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)

Reunited after seven years, Enrique and his mother embrace in North Carolina. "This is my son," she says. "It's a miracle he's here." Enrique survived three months on the rails to reach her. Experts estimate that 48,000 children from Central America and Mexico enter the U.S. each year illegally and without either of their parents. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times)