IN A DOORLESS desert safe house in northwestern Mexico, the drug traffickers sized up the boy—17 years old, 1,700 miles from home, gay, alone—and asked if he was too scared to strap on a load of marijuana and walk across the border into Arizona.

The kid—I'll call him Adrián—paused to consider his options. He didn't have any. Okay, he told them. He'd do it.

A Women's Refugee Commission report is cited in this Mother Jones article about the surge of chidlren fleeing violence in Central America and seeking safety in the United States.