Last year’s child migrant crisis is this year’s immigration court backlog

This time last year, we reported on the surge of unaccompanied children arriving in the U.S. from Central America. We took a close look at why the kids are coming and what happens to them once they arrive, along with the U.S. government’s scramble to handle the flood of child migrants.

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In the story, we featured an 11-year-old boy named Nodwin, who traveled from Honduras to the U.S. border almost entirely by himself and nearly drowned while crossing the Rio Grande River in an inflatable raft. He was reunited with his parents and now lives with them in Northern Virginia.

For this week’s Shortwave podcast, we check back in one year later on Nodwin’s case. By the time Nodwin, now 12, gets a hearing, he’ll have spent a third of his life in immigration limbo. His is one of 70,000 unaccompanied child migrant cases awaiting resolution in immigration courts.