Photos: Against all odds | Journey from Honduras
At dawn on July 4, a mother and her sleepy children get off a bus at a checkpoint in Ocotepeque, Honduras, a few miles south of the border with Guatemala. An elite force of American-trained police stopped the bus and searched for parents with children heading to the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
A little girl clutches her brother’s hand as she answers questions about her name and those of her parents. Miguel Martinez Madrid, who leads a special unit of the Honduran national police, holds the siblings’ ID cards as he talks to them near Ocotepeque, Honduras. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
When asked by Honduran national police agent Noel Hernandez to identify her parents, 5-year-old Jennifer Mayela Lara, points to her mother. Police had stopped their minibus on the highway to Guatemala. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Two-year-old Yahir clings to his mother, Ana Maria Ramos, after police stopped their bus. Ramos said she was escaping the violence and poverty in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to join a relative in L.A., but she didn’t have the proper documents to take her son out of Honduras. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Men line up against a Guatemala-bound bus that was stopped by Honduran authorities on a highway near Ocotepeque, Honduras, just a few miles from the border. Men were searched for weapons, and women were questioned. Children were screened to determine if they were headed for the United States. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Honduran national police agent Jose Sauceda escorts 16-year-old Damilo Avila Zavala from a Guatemala-bound bus. The boy, who did not have parental permission to leave the country, said he was only traveling to see a girlfriend in a nearby Honduran town. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
A member of the Honduran national police boards a bus on a highway near Ocotepeque, Honduras. The special police, trained by the U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit, were looking for children bound for Guatemala and eventually the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
At a temporary checkpoint, a special team of Honduran police agents waves down a bus on the highway to Guatemala. The road is a popular route for Honduran children trying to reach the United States. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
At dawn on July 4, Honduran police inspect a delivery truck at an impromptu checkpoint on a highway near Ocotepeque, Honduras, a few miles from the Guatemala border. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Honduran special police walk past a border monument along a smuggler’s trail paralleling the Guatemala border near Ocotepeque, Honduras. The U.S.-trained unit is trying to control the surge of adults and children illegally traveling to the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Honduran national police patrol near trash left by immigrants in the Rio Lempa, along the Honduras-Guatemala border. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
The Agua Caliente, Guatemala, border checkpoint is visible from a footpath that smugglers use to sneak Central American immigrants, many headed to the U.S., into Guatemala. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)