Migrant Kids Survive Hardship To Reunite With Parents. Then What?

For nearly a month, the two sisters — then ages 17 and 12 — traveled by road from their home in El Salvador to the southern border of the United States. They had no parent or relatives with them on that difficult journey in the fall of 2016 — just a group of strangers and their smugglers.

Ericka and her younger sister Angeles started out in multiple cars, Ericka remembers. "In Mexico, it was buses. And we changed buses very often." (NPR is using only the sisters' middle names to protect their identity as they await a decision on their application for asylum in the U.S.)