The work outlines the problems involved in the migration of girls, boys and adolescents, aged 12-17, who come from countries in the North Triangle of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – and travel unaccompanied to the United States. There are specific circumstances that help to understand the complexity of a reality involving Central America and Mexico and which took on media relevance in June 2014 when the US government made public reports of the arrest of more than fifty thousand unaccompanied migrants who entered the country as undocumented, who crossed more than one internationally recognised border without their parents or guardians. They migrated, and continue to do so, by separation or ‘without an adult airline’ to whom that responsibility is assigned by law or customs. To this end, a review of texts and reports linked to the subject was carried out, as well as the systematisation of empirical information built through the ethnographic exercise carried out in 2012 and 2013 in the border city of Tapachula, Chiapas.