Pulitzer-Prize winning author tells Indianapolis students a story some know well — of the dangerous journey from Central America to the U.S.

For some of the students that heard Sonia Nazario speak at Shortridge High School Monday, the story she told of children making a perilous trip on the roofs and sides of freight trains to reach their parents in America was all too familiar.

Nazario wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series, Enrique’s Journey, about a boy who traveled alone from Honduras to the United States to reunite with his mother.

“Several children today after my talk came up to me and said, ‘I made the exact same journey as Enrique,’” said Nazario, who also discussed her reporting with an audience of educators and community members Monday evening at an event hosted by Indianapolis Public Schools.

“These kids … are hunted like animals all the way as they migrate north through Mexico,” Nazario said. “There are people who are trying to rob them, rape them, beat them, deport them — all the way as they travel north.”

When IPS opened a newcomer program this year, dedicated to educating children who are new to the country and just learning English, enrollment quickly ballooned with teens who traveled alone from Central America. Chalkbeat spent a day with one student who fled gang violence in Honduras to reunite with her mother in Indianapolis.

Nazario highlighted the Indianapolis newcomer school as one example of how the district is helping kids adjust to America.

“I love newcomer schools,” Nazario said. “Those schools allow kids recently arrived to spend a year with other new arrivals, so that they can get their feet under them.”

Teenagers often make the journey to the U.S. to reconnect with parents who left them in their home countries when they were infants or young children, and Nazario called on educators to help parents and children talk about these painful years of separation.

“If there’s one thing as educators you take away from today, you must bring these parents and kids together to discuss this,” she said. “Until they do, (children) are so red with rage towards their parents, they cannot do anything else. They cannot focus on their studies.”