Lately I’ve been studying up on the long history of exploitation, corruption, and violence in Central America, the root causes that have been driving so many thousands of people to migrate north in recent years and months.
I feel as if I’ve mentally traced people’s stories from their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, up that long, exhausting caravan route through Mexico.
Now I want to know more of what they experience when they arrive at our border.
To begin, here’s more from Valeria Luiselli’s 2017 book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions—pages 20-21 this time.
[Their journey through Mexico] ends at the U.S.-Mexico border. And there begins another journey: one that is not as dangerous, objectively speaking, but is equally terrifying in the children’s eyes. Once [they’ve] reached the border, the coyotes’ job is usually done and the children are on their own. They try to turn themselves in to the migra, or Border Patrol, as soon as possible. They know their best bet is to be formally detained by Border Patrol officers: crossing the desert beyond the border alone is too dangerous, if not impossible. They also know that if they are not caught at this point, or if they do not surrender themselves to the law, it is unlikely that they will arrive at their final destination—the home of a relative in some city, usually far from the border. If the legal proceedings don’t begin now, their fate will be to remain undocumented, like many of their parents or adult relatives already in the United States. Life as an undocumented migrant is perhaps not worse than the life they are fleeing, but it is certainly not the life anyone wants. So, the children who cross the border, into the desert, try to stick to the busier roads and walk openly along highways, until someone—hopefully an officer and not a vigilante—sees them.
I remember a teenager who, during an interview in court, told me of his increasing desperation when, after hours of walking the arid plains of New Mexico, the Border Patrol hadn’t appeared. It was not until his second day of walking in the desert under the burning sun that a vehicle finally appeared on the far horizon. He stood in the middle of the road, waving his arms. And when the vehicle pulled over beside him, to his immense relief, two tall officers stepped out and detained him.
My mom always told me I was born under a lucky star, he said when he finished his story.