Enrique’s Journey addresses the impact of immigration on families. Thus, it provides an alternative to common immigration narratives, which focus on ideological talking points designed to win political arguments. Studies show that an increasing number of unaccompanied minors are crossing the US-Mexico border. Like Enrique, many of these children undertake the trip north to find their mothers. Poverty and high divorce rates in Central America and Mexico leave many women unable to provide for their children. These women face hard choices: They can either remain in their home countries and watch their children suffer or immigrate to the US and send money home to support them.

Though many mothers who choose to immigrate have good intentions, abandonment has a lasting impact on children. It leaves them confused, hurt, angry, and resentful. Some abandoned children cope with drugs and alcohol. Many have problems regulating their emotions. Abandoned children have mixed feelings toward their mothers. On one hand, they idealize their mothers and yearn to be reunited with them: “In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although in the United States the women struggle to pay rent and eat, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem.