Cities have responded to this mandate in distinct ways: In some, a network of programs shepherds families through bureaucratic hurdles, making the process of enrolling in and attending school less daunting. In others, schools and volunteers have cobbled together a tenuous hodgepodge of resources to try and help. But some communities have erected roadblocks—sometimes deliberately, other times because they don’t understand the law—that have made being a student in a new country that much harder.

One day in 2014, Jose, a statuesque 17-year-old with smooth dark skin and short curly hair, told the relatives he lived with in Honduras that he had decided to go north. He had been raised in the murder capital of the world. His father was dead. And Jose wanted to be with his mother, who had traveled to America when he was just a boy. And so, he left.

Jose traveled alone through Guatemala and then through Mexico by train and on foot. It was a difficult trip, and—until immigration officials finally picked him up at the Texas border—he feared he might die of hunger or at the hands of drug cartels every step of the way. As Jose huddled in a frigid detention facility, the authorities tracked down his mother, Dania.

I met Jose (I’ve agreed not to identify him by his full name to preserve his privacy) in the spring of last year at his family’s tiny apartment in a sprawling complex in one of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods. There, Dania earns what she can at a local butcher shop, but she can barely cover the basics. I visited on a warm day and the apartment was stifling. Jose told me about his journey in Spanish—in a voice almost devoid of emotion—as he sat crammed onto a sofa next to his relatives, all of whom are also undocumented. It was a family that finally felt whole again but that was also desperately fragile after nearly a decade apart. As he spoke, Jose’s memories seemed too deliberate, too succinct—as if he hadn’t yet processed what he’d been through or how he ended up in that small apartment in such a huge city. It was only later, when his sister Esmeralda recounted the story of how she and another sister were temporarily separated during their own trek north, that tears rolled silently down his cheeks. “By the grace of God,” Jose said, he arrived in New York City.

He was more right than he knows. Nearly 6,000 Central American child immigrants were released to family members or other caregivers in New York state between September 2013 and October 2014 alone. A politically, racially, and socioeconomically diverse metropolis, New York City in particular can be an extremely fortunate place for a young immigrant to end up. Last year, for example, New York City, in partnership with several foundations, announced that it would provide legal counsel to unaccompanied minors; the city also stationed health and education officials at the courts to help families enroll in the public health-insurance programs, schools, and after-school initiatives that are open to children regardless of immigration status. For all the challenges they face, many of the kids who end up in New York City, an urban haven that has long welcomed immigrants, are lucky: There are people ready to guide them through a complex web of services that has existed for decades.

More than a year after his arrival, Jose is still adapting to life in a city that never stops moving, to a language he struggles to understand, and to a home with a mother he is still getting to know. But he has found some refuge at Pan American International High School at Monroe in the Bronx, part of the Internationals Network for Public Schools, a nonprofit that works with the city to educate recent immigrant children who score in the bottom quartile on English-language tests. Bridgit Bye, a no-nonsense but fiercely warm Venezuelan immigrant who will do just about anything to help her overwhelmed students succeed, has been the principal of the school since it opened in 2008. “If you’re working here, you’re working from your heart,” she told me during an interview in her office, a quiet retreat compared with the bustle and noise of a chaotic outer office.