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Taking a ride on a freight train to cover migration to the U.S.

In this series, NPR takes readers and listeners behind the news and explains how we do our journalism. Here, Eyder Peralta transports us to Mexico for this week's Reporter's Notebook.

For decades, migrants have been riding north through Mexico aboard a freight train nicknamed "La Bestia." An NPR reporter hopped on board to ask some migrants why they do it.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Scott Detrow is a White House correspondent for NPR and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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