One said goodbye, embracing his anxious parents. One left without a word, indignant and angry.

After traveling thousands of miles by bus, train and on foot, the two young men met in a homeless shelter on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

Oscar was a shy 15-year-old when his parents hired a local “coyote” in July 2008 to help him leave Veracruz, Mexico, and cross the border to seek work in the United States. Jorge, gregarious, bright-eyed and also 15, gathered up his 6-year-old cousin six months later and left Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in the middle of the night, to escape abuse that he said had escalated into fistfights with his father. He also planned to work and send money back to his mother.

Without knowing it, both were headed toward homelessness. In that, they joined thousands of other immigrant children who have left their native country — for work, family reunification or refuge — crossed into the United States and wound up alone.

Last year, the Office of Refugee Resettlement reported that 8,244 children entered the United States unaccompanied and without immigration documents and eventually ended up in its custody. Illinois received 627 of them.