Today, we present the second part of an exclusive interview with young journalist Matt Slaby, who traveled with immigrants on their journey from Guatemala to Mexico.

What is the most horrible thing that happened on the trip?

I'm not exactly sure how to split that hair. The most horrible thing about this route is that the immigrant is the least culpable of all sides involved, having made a choice to eat over starving. Immigration on this route -- which is much different from hiring a coyote to guide you through Mexico -- is an issue of poverty and a symptom of old, imperial economic models embodied in CAFTA, NAFTA, and other various Banana Republic machinations that the "developed" world has promulgated on our southern neighbors. If our policymakers were to engage in responsible legislation and treaty making that looked at the human impact of their ideas with as much forethought as they give to business interests, there would be no immigration issue to speak of.

What drives people to take such risks and make this trip North?

I asked that very same question to an immigrant who had lost both of his legs under the wheels of the freight train after dozing off and loosing his grip on the train. He was recovering in a shelter for dismembered immigrants run by a one-woman army in Tapachula. His answer was very telling and cuts past most of the policy-level jargon that gets thrown around in DC circles. He told me this: "You do it because your stomach demands it."

Were there many children on the trip?

"Children" is kind of a flexible term when you start looking at countries where working age can be as young as five. In that context, a 12 year-old can be well into adulthood, having been a breadwinner of sorts for the better part of a decade. Semantics aside, there are a lot of teenagers and young adults along the route. Children are also fairly common. The youngest person that I met traveling alone was 12.

Who was your most memorable character on the trip?

Padre Alejandro Solalinde of Ixtepec who is a one man army combating police corruption and a tireless advocate for immigrants. You can read more about him in an article I wrote for The University of Denver Sturm College of Law Free Press.

Having witnessed the endless line of people willing to take great risks to go North, what are your feelings on the immigration issue now?

Mainstream debate seems to focus on ratcheting up enforcement as a means to curb immigration. After seeing the risks people are willing to take for a minimum wage job in the United States, these measures seem foolish and misguided. John Wayne has been dead for years and this sort of western justice is outdated in the sense that the vast majority of so-called "criminal" immigrants are fleeing economic devastation that is perpetuated by poorly crafted U.S. external policy. In my opinion, Tom Tancredo and other anti-immigrant policy makers are bad doctors who propose to treat the symptom and not the disease. Immigration is the symptom; economic hardship created under bad policy is the disease. The moment that we, as the richest and most powerful nation in the world, are willing to look at what we can do to cure the disease is the moment that the northward flow of immigration will slow.

What do you hope to do with the incredible photographs and the stories you found?

I am currently seeking publication. Some of the pictures and stories have found play in a few journals and documentary websites, though these stories belong in front of a bigger and more diverse audience. I feel like I'm facing the same dilemma that many writers and photographers with a bent for social justice have: the places most ready to publish the stories cater to audiences that are already familiar -- or at least unchallenged -- by the content. This story belongs in the hands of people unfamiliar or unwilling to accept the simple truth that the plight of immigrants is not one that will be solved by bigger walls, deeper moats, stricter enforcement against employers, or even shoot-on sight orders given to every Border Patrol agent. It is rooted in the forces of globalization and embodied in the immigrant risking everything because their stomach demands

Visit The Free Press online to read more about Matt's journey and view additional photographs.