Enrique's Journey Quotes
"Sleep facedown so your stomach won’t growl so much."
"I’d trade it all for my mother. I never had someone to spoil me."
"Do this, don’t do that, have you eaten? You can never get the love of a mother from someone else."
"The person I love is the center of my life and of my heart. The person I love IS YOU."
"He cannot see blood, but he senses it everywhere. It runs in a gooey dribble down his face and out of his ears and nose. It tastes bitter in his mouth."
"He thinks of his mother. He will be buried in an unmarked grave, and she will never know what happened."
"Please," he asks God, "don’t let me die without seeing her again."
"I’m going to find my mom," Enrique says, quietly.
"The first time he set out to find her, he was still a callow kid. Now he is a veteran of a perilous pilgrimage."
"Some go up to five days without eating. Their prize possessions are scraps of paper, wrapped in plastic, often tucked into a shoe."
"Why don’t you go home? Wouldn’t that be better?"
"No." Enrique shakes his head. "I don’t want to go back."
"God has a plan for you," she says. "You have much to give."
"We could never keep going forward without people like this. These people give you things. In Chiapas, they take things away."
"God says, when I saw you naked, I clothed you. When I saw you hungry, I gave you food. That is what God teaches."
"It feels good to give something that they need so badly."
"I figure when I die, I can’t take anything with me. So why not give?"
"What if someday something bad happens to us? Maybe someone will extend a hand to us."
"When I help someone here, I feel like I’m giving food to my children."
"For some, the migrants’ gratitude is enough reason to give."
"One of the acts of mercy is to give shelter to a migrant."
"Being a good Christian means being a good Samaritan."
"They are migrants. We are going to feed them here."
"I hope God helps you someday. I was hungry. And you fed me well."
"I feel better if I help. They are suffering more than I do."
"Every day, I have to battle a lot of problems here. But I feel at peace."
"This is what I consider the mission of the church. It is fundamental."
"Drink from the Río Bravo, and you’ll be stuck in Nuevo Laredo forever."
"Tracker Charles Grout can spot a footprint from a moving Ford Bronco."
"They work together, along railroads and in the desert, taking turns tracking on foot and driving ahead in the Bronco, sometimes for days."
"If footprints are not windblown or caved in, they are recent."
"Like a bloodhound, he leans over and picks up his pace."
"Every two weeks or so, Sauceda says, he has to call an ambulance for an immigrant who has been bitten by a rattlesnake or hit by a train or has grown so dehydrated in the Texas desert that he is nearing collapse."
"The temperature climbs to 100 degrees—cool compared with the highs of 112 to 118 the week before."
"Carefully, Grout presses forward seven more paces, then swings open the door to a yellow shed."
"Many immigrants are glad to be tracked down."
"Guerra gladly crawled into the back of Grout’s truck, dubbed 'the cage.'"
"Enrique makes a decision: When he calls his mother, he will ask her to hire El Tiríndaro."
"He spots a sneaker floating near the riverbank."
"In the Texas desert, snakes come out to hunt at night, when it is cooler."
"Many times, when Enrique falls asleep, he has the same nightmare: A snake has bitten him in the mouth."
"Nine rings of coyotes are said to operate in Nuevo Laredo."
"He has memorized it. Now the agents cannot use it to locate and deport her."
"Locked up day after day, month after month, the children grow desperate."
"For half an hour on the river’s island, everyone lies stone still."
"Enrique sleeps until El Tiríndaro shakes him."
"Everything Enrique hears makes him terrified of snakes and scorpions."
"El Hongo listens. Finally, he decides against going alone."
"Enrique awakens to find that someone has stolen his right shoe."
"Jasmín grabs her mother’s hair, her ears. She squeals with delight."
"She carries Jasmín in her arms to the city’s central plaza, where children beg with outstretched arms."
"She prays. She asks that Jasmín not get sick, that Enrique stay away from drugs."
"Jasmín finds a bougainvillea branch blooming with red flowers and brings it to her mother."
"María Isabel undresses Jasmín and slips on her white nightgown."
"She rocks her in her arms. Jasmín kisses her mother lightly."
"She cannot fall asleep without stroking her mother’s belly."
"The children of single mothers suffer most, she says."
"Jasmín has taken to calling the only man in her twenty-seven-year-old uncle Miguel, papi."
"As time passes, Enrique sees other things with equal clarity."
"He gives his mother his first gift: $100 for her birthday."
""Because my mami is crying. My mami cries all the time.""
"Jasmín waves with both hands and calls out, "Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami. Adiós, mami.""
"I followed him to church; as he said Mass in a cemetery and to incarcerated prisoners."
"The drowning in the river is from Enrique and other migrants."
"I retraced Enrique’s steps on both sides of the river."
"Immigrant children detained by the Border Patrol entering the country illegally are now handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement."
"The depictions of how Enrique bypassed the Border Patrol checkpoint come, in part, from my observations."
"The relationship between Enrique and his mother is from Enrique, Lourdes, Diana, Lourdes’s boyfriend."
"I spent a week in 2003 observing the lives of María Isabel and her daughter, Jasmín, in Honduras."
"To better understand Los Tubos, the neighborhood where María Isabel lived with her mother, I took a tour of the area."
"The description of Honduras’s economic and social conditions comes from Maureen Zamora, a migration expert in Honduras."
"The accounts of life for Enrique, María Isabel, Lourdes, her sister Mirian, and others are based on my trip to Honduras and North Carolina in 2003."
"The number of undocumented children in the United States is from the 2005 Pew Hispanic Center study."
"Chiapas’s troubles with Central American gangs are from Gabriela Coutiño, a spokeswoman for the National Immigration Institute in Tapachula."
"The description of how Border Patrol agents spot suspect vehicles comes from Alexander D. Hernandez, supervisory agent for the Border Patrol at Cotulla, Texas."
"The reaction by María Isabel to Enrique’s arrival in North Carolina is from Belky, her aunt Rosa Amalia, María Isabel, and her aunt Gloria."
"The account of Enrique’s job, earnings, and purchases is from my observations."
"Enrique’s 1 A.M. departure is drawn from interviews with Enrique and migrant Hernán Bonilla."
"A description of the jails where migrant children are held when they are caught by U.S. authorities comes from time I spent in these facilities."
"The ride from Florida to North Carolina is from my observations as I retraced the North Carolina portion of the trip."
"Corrections Corporation of America has denied allegations that the children in its custody were not adequately fed."
"The account of crossing to the island and then to the United States is from interviews with Enrique."