This is the fifth in a five-part series detailing the arduous journey of Ramón Zepeda, an illegal migrant into the United States. In part one, young Ramón makes the decision to leave a bitter life on the streets in Nicaragua. Parts two and three detail the journey north. Part four shows how Ramón came into custody of the U.S. INS

Ramón is not supposed to be here. The immigration judge had ruled in his favor; his lawyers expected to find him a new home, with a new family. It all became fantasy when government lawyers decided to turn him into a test case and appeal the judge's decision granting him asylum. They don't want a floodgate of homeless children streaming into the U.S. So close to freedom, yet still so far.

Instead of releasing Ramón to foster parents, the Immigration and Naturalization Service moves him away from his social workers and lawyers in Arizona to yet another juvenile criminal center in Los Angeles and then to another in Tulare County, CA, near Fresno, before his lawyers convince the INS to move him to a family detention center in Pennsylvania. "INS has the discretion to say he can go with a foster family pending his appeal," says Milagros Cisneros, Ramón's attorney. "They won't do that to him, they think he's an escape risk."

The Berks County Youth Center has no bars on the windows or barbed-wire around its parameter. But the doors are locked. When Ramón is escorted into a small office at the INS shelter-care facility, he wears no shoes. The guards have taken them away. Ramón has been in the U.S. long enough to know they only do that to keep prisoners from escaping. He has walked thousands of miles and crossed through six countries, but he had more freedom on the streets than he does now.

Life is not all bad. He is finally learning how to read and write. He wants to get an education and become a lawyer. He already has picked up bits of English: "Pleased to meet you," he says. He plays soccer with kids who are very much like him, who are stuck in a system that fails those who are otherwise lost. The center houses around 35 kids. Some have families in adult detention centers, separated from their children.

In all, INS detains more than 4,500 children in limbo status at 95 facilities. Only 25 of those are licensed non-profit shelter care facilities. The remaining 70 are juvenile correction facilities where immigrant children commingle with juvenile offenders who have committed murder and other serious crimes. Children spend months and even years in detention. Less than half have legal advocates, even though INS holds kids to the same standards as adults in immigration hearings. A bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif, would establish a separate office within the Department of Justice to ensure that children receive access to lawyers and guardians. The bill also requires minimum standards on holding children and seeks to remove what child advocates consider a conflict of interest at the INS: namely that the agency charged with prosecuting these children for immigration violations is also responsible for their custody and well being. Hearings on are being considered this summer in the Senate and House.

The number of unaccompanied minors grows each year on the border. Children from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador make their way to Guatemala City and Tecún Umán to cross into Mexico. Only the very strong ones make it north to the U.S. For Central Americans, the border is not horizontal. It is vertical. For them, Mexico is one long border crossing full of danger. "The lucky kids move on from Guatemala City," says Bruce Harris, director of Casa Alianza, a child advocacy group based in Costa Rica that helps street kids in Central America.

Ramón knows how lucky he is. He did not get trapped in Guatemala and he did not get caught in Mexico. He made it to the U.S. Recalling his adventures, his plight, Ramón does not talk about pending bills in Congress. These things, he does not comprehend. Details of his journey flow from him like a river current, always moving and hard to scoop up and hold. He thinks about all the broken pairs of shoes he discarded along the roadways. And he thinks about all the thousands of miles he has walked toward freedom, the rivers he has crossed, the mountains he has climbed, the valleys he has traversed, the city streets he has crossed only to wind up here. He thinks about Isabelle and Daniel, who bought him the shoeshine box, and the other faceless angels who helped him. He has lost contact with all of them. He thinks about his brothers and sisters, whom he remembers as malnourished. Dona Elena may be dead, but he still fears her sons. He remembers the horrors of Chinandega, where he heard the stories of bodies of children being found dead. "I've dreamed that I was with a family, that I was studying, that I was walking around with a tie, like a documented person," he says.

Only Ramón knows what he left behind, by the side of the road — what he cannot bring himself to say out loud; what it took to stay alive for so many miles. Ramón sticks to the road and the daylight when reliving his version. He keeps the night to himself. Somewhere in that darkness, he can still see his mother holding the watch as she turns away from him. "She left me there," he says looking down, his voice shrinking.

With a polite handshake, Ramón gets up from the table, smiling his half-smile. He is not sure when his case will be resolved, whether he will be forced to return home or placed in the American foster care system. He walks out the room in his stocking feet. He bends over as a guard puts his arm out to guide him. He turns down a hallway, the shoes dangling in his hand. He can put them on again when he reaches his room.