REYNOSA, Mexico —
After a weeks-long trip from her native Honduras, Juana Cruz Funez couldn’t understand why she and her daughter, Itzy, 8, had been denied their goal — entry into the United States.
“I heard people could stay in America if we came with our children,” a sobbing Cruz said moments after the U.S. Border Patrol expelled mother and child back across the Rio Grande to this Mexican border city.
Cruz, 40, and her daughter were among the ranks of hundreds of migrants, almost all Central Americans — mostly women and children — squatting in a public square a block from the Rio Grande here.