Hostage house in Compton shows dangers for illegal immigrants

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Columnist Hector Tobar on the dangers for undocumented migrants in the United States

The route northward passes through El Naranjo, a Guatemala jungle town where I rode in a little boat that puttered along the flat water of the Umacinta river, past tall ceiba trees and the largely apathetic Mexican border patrol.

And it ends in places like Compton, where there’s a white stucco box of a house with the roof painted ominously black and bars on the windows. Until recently, two quiet Latinos lived there, waving to the neighbors and barbecuing on the front lawn while they held more than two dozen people hostage inside.

This is the trail immigrants follow to enter the United States illegally. It’s more than 2,000 miles long, and crazy things happen at nearly every stop.

Read the rest of Tobar’s column here.

-- Deborah Bonello in Mexico City