Growing Up On the Migration Route

Upon crossing the border from Guatemala and into Mexico, 19-year-old Claudia Rivera and her family were stopped by a group of unknown men. 

“They took us when we crossed into Chiapas and took everything we were carrying, except for [a] cell phone,” says Rivera, who is now residing in Casa Monarca, a shelter in Monterrey, Mexico. “Then, they took us to some bushes and made me undress to see if I was hiding any money.”

After the men searched Rivera and her mother for hidden items, they allowed the two women to get dressed again. While Rivera is grateful she and her family did not experience significant harm during their journey north, she says she is still deeply troubled by witnessing the women in her family being separated and treated differently than her male relatives. “It was very complicated,” she explains. 

Rivera left Honduras with her mother and 15-year-old brother in January 2024, aiming to reunite with their two older brothers in the United States. For more than a year, they have been at Casa Monarca and, instead of migrating to the United States, they are awaiting a residency visa in Mexico.

Rivera’s experience is becoming more common as migrant shelters in Mexico are increasingly filled with children and teenagers who run through the rooms or tents, play soccer, or gather to watch TikTok on a parent’s phone. Since Donald Trump began restricting migration along the U.S–Mexico border, families remain stranded in shelters, camps, and other locations as they contemplate whether to stay in Mexico or return to their homes.

Father Luis Eduardo Zavala, director and founder of Casa Monarca, said these new, harsher U.S. immigration policies have significantly altered the level of care families need. Children and teenagers journeying through Mexico face heightened risks of trafficking, exploitation, kidnapping, forced recruitment, and sexual abuse.

Those risks disproportionately impact women, including girls and teenagers. Oscar Misael Hernández, a social anthropologist and researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a research center focused on the U.S.–Mexico border, says that while the risks are high for all undocumented migrants, there are notable generational and gender distinctions.

“They know that men can perform certain functions and women can perform others if they are forcibly recruited. And there is a gender reproduction in these jobs that they are then forced to do,” Hernández explains. “Young bodies are more susceptible to sexual exploitation. Adult bodies have less of this ‘bodily capital,’ less aesthetic capital for these illicit purposes,” he adds.

While comprehensive initiatives and safe spaces to protect these young migrants remain insufficient, the distinct impact of migration on them—including their increasing vulnerability—is gaining significant attention in Mexico. Organizations such as Casa Monarca are stepping in to thwart these threats and attempt to guarantee more safety for migrants. 

Networks of Information and Support

“We strive to create an environment for them that is as similar to a home as possible,” Father Zavala explains. “There are enormous challenges because some [teenagers] arrive having experienced a lot of violence, pain, and suffering. The parents communicate the anguish [of the journey] to their children, and sometimes even typical teenagers rebel.”

Zavala says Casa Monarca provides information about the risks migrants may encounter on their journey to the border, including human and sex trafficking. “We always advise parents to be careful with their daughters during the journey,” Zavala added. “Unfortunately, we’ve encountered cases of families who come with daughters who are exposed during migration and end up becoming victims of trafficking through kidnapping.”

But the desperation to get to the U.S.–Mexico border puts migrants at greater risk. They’ve even had people return to the shelter after being victimized. Yasmín Ramos, a psychologist at Monarca, agrees, adding that “extreme and urgent need” also exacerbates the risks. “It’s the ‘I don’t have the time, perhaps, to rule out job options because I urgently need to eat, I urgently need my children to eat, so the first offer is it.’ And then there’s the issue of documentation … This informality makes the undocumented population much easier to target,” she says.

Thanks to social media such as Facebook and WhatsApp, many migrants are aware of the risks of robbery, extortion, abuse, and kidnapping and have established safety networks along their routes that allow them to communicate, share locations, and warn of potential dangers.

Tamara Segura, a social anthropologist and researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology, says that Central Americans are among the groups who often rely on these networks as they move along their routes. “They are supposed to spread the word about what they are doing, and above all, to look out for each other, so to speak, on social networks,” Segura explains. “For instance, they post videos of their location, and if they’ve already crossed into Mexico, they’ll post a photo of a Mexican landscape as a tip for others to know where they are.”

However, this network remains fragile and vulnerable, particularly to organized crime. Segura explains that prearranged agreements can be disrupted, leading to detention in certain locations for not paying the fee—a quota imposed by organized crime for the right to cross along the routes under their control.

“If they don’t know how to negotiate, or if the person they’re traveling with doesn’t know how to negotiate, they detain them and hold them hostage, or they have them detained in certain places for the payment of the fee,” Segura adds.

Though shelters can sometimes be part of the cycle of violence migrants face, places like Casa Monarca believe that providing more home-like conditions and opportunities for local integration can offer families, regardless of their final destination, a chance to recover from their journey and calmly rethink their next steps, acknowledging the complexity of their emotional processes.

“We have very strict protocols regarding harassment,” Zavala explains. “We have very strict protocols for situations of potential domestic violence. These are families who are stuck here, and there’s a process of frustration coming from them, a process of anguish, even a process related to those who have debts.”

Putting Education and Mental Health First

A significant percentage of the migrant population arriving at Monarca has experienced sexual abuse, whether in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, Ramos explains. While more prevalent among women, some men have also been victims. Additionally, sexual violence permeates the entire migration process.

“These are people in a vulnerable position due to a lack of support networks. Many don’t know their rights in Mexico, and they are obviously afraid to report anything,” Ramos says.

Casa Monarca has been working on strengthening psychological support and developing methods to promote mental well-being. They often organize outings to movies or museums for children and teenagers to foster a sense of normalcy, offer optional psychological counseling, and provide educational opportunities.

Erendira is traveling alone with her five children who range between the ages of 7 and 18. They were separated at some point during their journey on the freight train, commonly used by migrants to cross Mexico toward the border. “Those two days were the worst,” she says. “I thought I was never going to see them again.” 

For Erendira, it is her children’s forward-looking vision of their journey that sustains her through the ongoing uncertainty. She says, with a slight laugh, “They see it as an adventure and say, ‘Imagine how we’ll tell this story to our kids.’” They attempted to cross the border twice, but the water level became too dangerous for the children, and they decided to return. Their CBP One appointment never materialized, and they now await Mexican documentation at Casa Monarca.

Despite the prolonged waiting times, which often mean a lack of access to educational services and the stability crucial during these formative years, Erendira’s children have been able to attend school thanks to a Casa Monarca program in collaboration with the public school system. 

Through an agreement between Nuevo León’s Secretariat of Equality and Inclusion and Secretariat of Education, children are enrolled in schools near the shelter. This partnership allows parents and their children to follow a routine that includes going to school and doing homework. Additionally, it fosters intercultural processes within the schools, supporting the state’s evolving migration landscape.

“Any moment is a good time for children who go to school to have an integration process that allows the students at the school to learn about migration firsthand from the [migrant] children and adolescents, which benefits the school as well,” Father Zavala says. “In this way, the children and adolescents themselves also become promoters of migration.”