Photos: In Honduras, U.S. deportees seek to journey north again
With a Bible in a worn carrying case and clothes in a parachute bag, the Rodriguez family walks from a repatriation center in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, in July. They had been traveling to the United States when arrested and deported by border agents in Tapachula, Mexico. Like tens of thousands in this city, they tried to flee violence and poverty. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Thousands of undocumented Honduran children deported after having journeyed unaccompanied to the U.S. face perilous conditions in the violent neighborhoods from which they sought escape.
Young men play soccer on a street in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Graffiti marks the neighborhood as controlled by the Mara Salvatrucha gang. Residents caught on the wrong side of the violent gang have been killed; others fled to the United States. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Isaias Sosa, 19, stands outside his house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. In 2013 he was targeted by Mara Salvatrucha gang members, so he fled to the U.S. Days after he and a neighbor were deported from Texas, the friend was killed outside the corner store in the background. Sosa fled a second time and was deported again. Now he lives in constant fear, and says he will probably try again to live in the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Behind the wall of his fortified house in San Pedro Sula, Isaias Sosa holds the Bible he carried while traveling to the U.S. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
National police officers patrol an abandoned and vandalized business in San Pedro Sula. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
A national police officer holds his pistol at the ready before climbing the stairs of an abandoned apartment building. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
A national police officer peeks around a doorway inside an abandoned house. With a portrait of the home’s patriarch still on the wall, the former residents probably left in haste. Gangs later stripped the house of everything else. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Razor wire sits atop a wall surrounding a home in San Pedro Sula. The fortification wasn’t enough to keep the residents safe, police said. Three of the now-abandoned home’s residents were killed by gang members earlier this year. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
As an army squad patrols in the background, Officer Santos Terecio Antonio of the national police questions scrap metal collectors on a street of abandoned buildings in San Pedro Sula. Most of the neighborhood’s residents have fled gang violence. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
A snapshot found in an abandoned house. At the top it reads, “For my mother, a gift from your son Elmer.” The young man had left for the United States. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
National police officers interrupt their patrol to let a young shepherd pass. The bridge is where they look for bodies pitched into the river by gang members. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
At the morgue in San Pedro Sula, Sonia Zuniga and her husband, Miguel Valladares, weep while waiting to claim the body of their 6-year-old niece. Another relative holds snapshots of Estefani Nicol Chavez Zuniga, who was inadvertently shot by a gang member relative inside her home. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Sonia Zuniga cries after arriving at the San Pedro Sula morgue with a coffin to carry the body of her niece. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
At a loading dock behind the morgue, relatives dress the body of 6-year-old Estefani Nicol Chavez Zuniga. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
As rain falls outside the San Pedro Sula morgue, Sonia Zuniga washes her hands with dripping water after cleaning and dressing the body of her niece. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
Relatives gently place the body of Estefani Nicol Chavez Zuniga in a casket at the morgue before driving her home in a pickup truck. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
