This is the fourth in a five-part series detailing the arduous journey of Ramón Zepeda, an illegal migrant into the United States. In part one, Young Ramón Zepeda makes the decision to leave a bitter life on the streets in Nicaragua. Parts two and three detail the journey north.

The knife blade is sharp, pressing against Ramón's throat as he writhes on the floor of his small apartment in Tijuana. Three men had knocked on his door, and when he answered, pushed their way inside. Their hands wrap tightly around his thin body as he recognizes the black tattoos carved into their thick arms. They are Cholos, a Tijuana street gang. He catches the flash of a blade and feels the coolness of its edge on his neck.

He is tired from washing cars all day. He lacks the strength or the energy to struggle. The men bind his hands and feet. He can taste dirt and blood in his mouth. The Cholos laugh as they pick through Ramón's things. They take his stereo, his television, his clothes. They take his new pair of basketball shoes. They laugh some more, then leave him on the floor, angry and bitter. The tears cut through the dirt on his face as he tries to get up. He can't. He squirms out of the apartment toward the landlord's door. The man frees him. Ramón calls the police, despite what the Cholos had said, despite the fact that he fears the police more than the gangs. He's scared they will find out he's a foreigner and deport him back to Nicaragua. He calls them anyway. They can do nothing about his things.

A month passes, and the Cholos come back. They have waited just long enough for Ramón to replace the things from the first robbery. They threaten to kill him. He knows when it is time to leave. Ramón packs his backpack with fresh clothes and food and heads to the border. By now, he has his developed a system. Tonight, he finally will cross into the United States. He will be safe and free. He meets another kid from Honduras and together they set out toward the border. They are careful about the migra, the U.S. border patrol. They run crouched over to a wall. They separate. Ramón climbs the wall.
Caught. No sooner do his feet hit the ground than the lights hit him. A voice tells him not to move. He brings his arm up to cover his eyes from the beam. There is no place to run, no place to hide.

He lies to the border agents, saying he is 18 years old. The Immigration and Naturalization Service holds Ramón for several days in an adult detention facility. Ramón is afraid, locked up with grown men. He tells the migra that he is only 16. They do not listen. Then they take him to Florence, Arizona, to a new facility. Ramón meets advocates from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project who find him a lawyer. The lawyers convince the migra that Ramón is a child and they release him into Arizona's foster care program. Ramón does not do well. He lets his guard down. He gets angry. The family does not want him anymore. He is placed with child protective services. They discover he has no papers and turn him back over to the migra. The cycle continues.

Months later, in September of 2000, they place Ramón in a shelter care facility. Ramón has problems. The migra say he is a disruption. He says they do not understand. They transfer him to the Globe Juvenile Detention facility in Globe, Arizona. The migra likes to transfer kids to criminal detention facilities when they don't have room at the shelter. It doesn't matter if the kids misbehave or not, if they need the room.

At Globe, the migra puts chains on his feet, on his hands, around his waist. He can't move. Ramón feels horrible. For once in his life, he feels like a delinquent. He tells the immigration officials, "I am not a criminal to suffer this." But they have heard it before. "Shut up," a guard tells him. "You are nobody."

Placed in a cell, he meets other immigration kids. They are mixed in with thieves and other serious juvenile offenders. Fights break out, and the guards do nothing but wait and see who wins. Ramón closes his eyes as he remembers when Doña Elena's sons would do the same to him.

On Trial. Three days after Christmas, Ramón is brought into an Arizona courtroom in shackles and slippers. It is his asylum hearing before an immigration judge who will decide if he stays or goes. Sitting in chains, Ramón is afraid of the men in the room. With the help of a woman who translates for him, he relates his beatings at the hands of Nicaraguan police and other gangs. "What was a typical day like for you during those years?" asks his lawyer, Michael Guenan. Ramón's answer is more terse than intended. "Sad," he says.

He did not stay in Honduras or El Salvador, he says, because they are too close to his homeland. He surely will be killed if he is forced to return, he says. A man from the migra — a government lawyer named Brett Landis — does not believe he is in danger. Landis gives him no chance to answer one question before bombarding him with the next. He demands to see the scars that Ramón claims are the result of his mother burning him. "Here and here," Ramón says, pointing to his hands and knee.

"Because you didn't contact them at any time after you were six years old, you don't know if you could go live with any one of your brothers or sisters at this point, do you?" Landis asks.

"No," Ramón responds. "No, because they were kids themselves; they were little."

Landis challenges him. "But they are not kids now," he says.

Lori Ann Rosales, a social worker, testifies that Ramón suffers from "sleeping and eating disturbances" and has the classic signs of childhood depression. He is both protective and distrustful. "From inception, he lacked what we call in counseling the bonding experience that we tend to have with our mothers," she says. "This is a child, a teenager, who has never bonded with anybody."

After back and forth arguments between the lawyers, Judge John Richardson says something that Ramón does not understand. His lawyers smile and are happy. They tell him he has won his asylum case. He will be free at last. A foster family is ready to make him a part of their family. They speak Spanish, they have lived in Nicaragua, they are trained to deal with street kids. They will be perfect for Ramón . Standing in the courtroom in slippers, Ramón 's dream of being part of a family is about to come true.

TOMORROW: A CASE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS