Border Patrol agents found the man walking a little boy up a dirt road north of the Rio Grande near Mission, Texas, with eight other Central American migrants.
The pair wore matching blue-striped polo shirts.
Ely Fernandez explained that he was a taxi driver who had fled San Pedro Sula, a notoriously dangerous city in northern Honduras. Fernandez, 43, said a gang had threatened to kill him for not paying money they wanted to extort from him.