Photos: Looking back on a child migrant’s rail journey north on ‘The Beast’

Denis stretches after a night spent in a freight car parked in Tapachula. The then-12-year-old had run away from home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with little more than his mother’s San Diego phone number and a determination to find her.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis looks at a scrap of paper with his mother’s phone number.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Inside a matchbox, Denis kept his mother’s phone number hidden beneath a few coins begged from strangers.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis jumps onto a freight train as it leaves the Tapachula yard. “You have to run the same speed as the train,” he said. “Grab the ladder on the front of the train car. That way if you slip, you can pull your legs off the track before the wheels come.”  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis watches 13-year-old Jose Padilla Guerra make his first leap between cars of a moving freight train in Chiapas, Mexico, in August 2000. His lesson to other stowaway kids: “Don’t look down between the train cars. It’ll make you afraid.”   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis, front, ducks beneath tree branches whizzing overhead as he and other stowaways ride atop a freight train in Chiapas. Migrants call such trains “The Beast” for the hazards experienced on the journey to the U.S. border.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis gets food and water from Marta Hernandez de la Cruz, a rail-side resident of Mapastepec, Mexico.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis sleeps atop a fuel car speeding through a pueblo in Chiapas, his left leg around a railing to keep from falling off.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

As dawn breaks in July 2000, Denis rides through the Chiapas countryside.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis, 16, relaxes at his mother’s apartment in San Diego in November 2003. He rode freight trains by himself for 2 1/2 months to reach the U.S. border.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Maria Georgina Nunez, 47, cries while looking at a photo of son Denis in her San Diego apartment in December 2003. It shows him as a 12-year-old, asleep on a Mexican freight train during his struggle to reach San Diego.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Denis’ street in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in October 2003. Beginning at age 18 months, he was raised by his sister in the house in the right foreground, until he ran away at age 12 to find his mother.   (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Contreras, 21, does landscape work at a La Jolla house in August 2010. By age 25 he had a girlfriend and two children.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

Contreras, 25, at his Honduras home on July 10, 2014. The tatoo “Sandra” is in honor of the sister who raised him there. This year he was deported from San Diego, where he had lived nearly 14 years. He left behind his girlfriend, daughter and son.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)