Many migrants in Mexico journey north to the U.S. border by riding on top of freight trains. It's a dangerous trip: migrants have been kidnapped by cartels or killed by falling onto the tracks. And now, with the Trump administration suspending asylum applications at the border, the chances of crossing into the U.S. are even smaller than they were a few months ago.NPR's Eyder Peralta recently rode along with migrants through a frigid night to try to answer a simple question: why do so many still take the risk?For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [email protected] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Kids are going to be kids wherever they are.
I remember there was this one kid who was putting plastic bottles on the train tracks just to see what happened to them.
This is Eder Peralta, NPR's Mexico City correspondent. It was December, and he was in a train yard in northwest Mexico.
So at some point I gave him a little coin so he could put it on the train track and see what happened to it. And indeed, I had never done this before.
I did this when I was a kid.
Yeah, and it flattens it, right? It's like one of those machines.
This was a moment of downtime between many periods of acute motion. Hundreds of migrants were waiting for freight trains, hoping to jump aboard and ride north toward the U.S. border.
They have like their whole lives with them. You know, they have just bags full of coats and blankets and they have jugs of water. When a train would finally approach... They're so heavy that like the earth beneath it sort of heaves as they move across, right? It almost feels like the gravity of the train pulls you toward it.
The trains moved so fast that jumping on directly would be impossible for most of the migrants.
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