Migrants, young and old, are not always related. Border Patrol says fear of child trafficking forces separations
MISSION, Texas - Border Patrol agents found the man walking a little boy up a dirt road north of the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas, with eight other Central American migrants.
The pair wore matching blue-striped polo shirts.
Ely Fernandez explained that he was a taxi driver who had fled San Pedro Sula, a notoriously dangerous city in northern Honduras. Fernandez, 43, said a gang had threatened to kill him for not paying money they wanted to extort from him.
He had crossed the border illegally in March hoping to join his wife in Louisiana, and the boy, he told agents, was their 5-year-old son, Bryan.
When's the boy's birthday? an agent asked. Jan. 21, Fernandez said, but he couldn't remember the year - a
