A girl and a dream lost in the forest

Cuaro was devastated. She has no one to support her. By then, she and Sara had taken a series of buses to Honduras. They have spent all their money.

Now in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, she considered her options, weighing the trauma of trying to reach a country that would surely reject them. “I’m writing this to you with tears in my eyes,” she said via text message.

I will go to the immigration office to ask for help to go back home. “It pains me to give up the dream of living in a peaceful place,” he said. “But circumstances compel me.”

After the announcement of the new entry rule, immigrants are still leaving Darien at a rate of more than 4,000 a day, a record high. Since then, the number has dropped to about 600, about 20 times the daily average of a few years ago.

Cuaro and her daughter stayed at a shelter in Honduras with a dozen other Venezuelan migrants. There, he waited for his family to raise enough money to buy flights home.

A sister had come to Florida a few months earlier after returning from the border, and she told Guaro that she was rushing to find someone to sponsor them for the new entry program before all the spots were filled.

Sarah, with a cold, carelessly went to the shelter.

He said he remembers “everything” about the trip that ended there – the mud, the rivers, the terrifying nights without his mother.

Federico Rios Darian collaborated with reporting from Cape and Isayen Herrera From Caracas, Venezuela.

Julie Durkwitz heads the Andes Bureau, which covers Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Guyana. Before moving to South America, he was a national affairs correspondent and covered the American West. @julieturkewitz