DETAINED

A Honduran teen’s diary entries about his journey to the United States and subsequent incarceration in immigration detention.

D.’s parents migrated to the United States when he was six months old, so for the next 13 years of his life, he grows up in the care of his grandmother, whom he calls Tía, and his uncle Felipe. After his uncle and his grandmother both die tragically, in quick succession, the author and his cousin, Miguelito, decide to leave their village for the United States—el Norte—where they hope to reunite with D.’s parents in Nashville. On their way, they stop in Guatemala, where their cousins join them. Together, the four boys undertake a harrowing journey that involves attacks from cartel members, heart-stopping run-ins with border police, and death-defying leaps onto moving trains. In the U.S., border patrol agents take them to a detention center, separating the author from his cousins. For the next five months, immigration officials shuttle him between detention centers, some of them nothing more than a collection of tents and Porta Potties. “They woke me up at two or three in the morning,” D. writes outside the Tornillo Influx Facility in Texas. “Now they’re taking me somewhere else. They wouldn’t say if it was to see my parents or to go to another detention center, they just said I needed to meet them outside the tent in ten minutes….I was still half asleep. And nauseated. And scared. And heartbroken.” D. feels devoid of hope until he meets Morales, a Mexican American tícher who changes his life—and encourages him to write about his experience. The book’s vocabulary and syntax sometimes feel too sophisticated for a 14-year-old, but the author’s raw and confessional tone—and the chilling details and fast pace—make this memoir a shocking and moving read.

A brutally honest account of the impact of family separation at the U.S. border.