‘Will I Recognize You?’ She Traveled 2,500 Miles to Reach Her Mother.

LOS ANGELES — Ana Paredes paced back and forth in anxious anticipation, her eyes on the escalator disgorging passengers into the baggage claim area. When the little girl emerged, Ms. Paredes rushed forward to clutch and caress her. But 10-year-old Melissa, the daughter she had not seen for seven years, at first embraced her only halfheartedly.

Before boarding the flight to Los Angeles, the girl had fretted on the phone about whether she would find her mother at the airport. “Will I recognize you?” she asked.

Her arrival on April 2 marked the end of a 2,500-mile journey that began in Guatemala in February, progressed over land through Mexico and then ended in a hazardous raft trip across the Rio Grande into Texas. She spent several weeks in a government-contracted group home before being allowed to join her mother and two older siblings in California.

When Ms. Paredes left Melissa in Guatemala in 2014, her daughter had been a cheerful toddler, just starting to learn colors and talk in complete sentences. Now, she walked off the plane with her thick black hair gathered in a bun, her air mature and aloof, carrying her own luggage.

Read More:   NYTimes.com

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