Kwaoru destroyed. She had no one to support her. By then, she and Sarah had taken a series of buses to Honduras. They used up all their money.

Now in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, she considered her options, mindful of the trauma of trying to get into a country where she would almost certainly be rejected. “I am writing this to you with tears in my eyes,” he said in a text message.

I was going to the immigration office to ask for help to get back home. “It pains me to give up the dream of living in a place of peace,” he said. “But the situation is forcing me.”

Immediately after the new entry rule was announced, immigrants were still leaving the Darien River at a rate of over 4,000 people per day, a record. Since then, the number has fallen to around 600, which is still 20 times the daily average a few years ago.

Cuauro and her daughter ended up in a shelter in Honduras with dozens of other Venezuelan immigrants. There, he waited for his family to raise enough money to buy flights back home.

A sister arrived in Florida a few months ago after turning herself in at the border, telling Kwaoru she was in a hurry to find someone to sponsor her for the new entry program before all the vacancies were filled.

Sarah, catching a cold, moved around the shelter relentlessly.

From the journey that ended there – the mud, the rivers, the terrifying nights without his mother – he said he remembered “everything”.

Federico Rios Collaborated with reporting from Darren Gap and Isayen Herrera From Caracas, Venezuela.

Julie Turkowitz is the chief of the Andean office covering Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Guyana. Before moving to South America, he worked as a national affairs reporter covering the western United States. Tweet embed