Ira Glass
We've arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three, The Questionnaire.
Of course, the stuff that most affects children is not what they see in museums or what they see on television or what toys they play with. It's the stuff they go through in their lives. Over the last few years, you probably heard there's been a flood of kids who've arrived in the United States by themselves, with no adults at all. Some of these kids are teenagers. Some are a lot younger. How are they going to look back on that experience someday? What's it going to do to them?
The way it goes once they come to the country, if they turn themselves over to border patrol, they're put into this notoriously cold detention center called the icebox. Then they go to a temporary shelter and they start looking for their parents or relatives in the States to sponsor them. If they find them, they move in with the sponsors, and a few weeks or months later, they'll get a notice to appear in immigration court.
So they go to immigration court and then a judge, working with a translator, tells them that they have the right to an attorney, but the government isn't going to pay for an attorney. In other words, it's the kids' responsibility to find and pay for a lawyer or to find a pro bono lawyer. And organizations have sprung up to help with this, but there aren't enough lawyers to go around for all the kids.
For about a year and a half, Valeria Luiselli observed part of this process firsthand.
Valeria Luiselli
This is how it starts. It's April 2015 and the boy and I are seated at one end of a long mahogany table. He's 16 years old from Honduras.
I ask him, why did you come to the United States? It's the first question I ask all of the children in immigration court. My task there is a simple one.
I interview children the US government is trying to deport. I ask questions following a questionnaire, and the child answers them. I translate their stories from Spanish into English.
The questionnaire was put together by a coalition of lawyers to help them figure out how to build a case. A case for the child to stay in the country. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a volunteer.
I started doing this kind of work when an immigration lawyer mentioned to me that the courts needed interpreters. She was actually my own immigration lawyer. I'm from Mexico. And at the time, I was waiting for my green card to be either granted or denied.
The green card questionnaire is nothing like the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied minors. When you apply for a green card, you have to answer things like, do you intend to practice polygamy? And are you a member of the Communist Party? There's something almost innocent in the green card application's visions of the future and its possible threats.
The intake questionnaire for undocumented children, on the other hand, reveals a colder, more cynical and brutal reality. As you make your way down its 40 questions, it's impossible not to feel that the world has become a more [BLEEP] up place than anyone could have ever imagined.
The first two questions at the top of the questionnaire are, where is the child's mother? Where is the child's father? The spaces after these questions often remain blank. All the children I interview come without their fathers and without their mothers, and many of them don't even know where their parents are.
Question 2, when did you enter the United States? Most children don't know the exact date. They smile and say, last year, or a few months ago, or simply, I don't know.
3 and 4, what countries did you pass through? How did you travel here? To the first question, almost everyone immediately answers Mexico, and some also list Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
To the second question, with pride and horror, many say, I came on La Bestia, which literally means The Beast and refers to the freight trains that cross Mexico, on top of which many of these children have ridden. Thousands of people have died or been gravely injured aboard La Bestia, either because of its derailments or by falling off during the night, or by falling into the hands of policemen, thieves, and narcos. But people continue to take the risk because there's no other route to take if you cannot pay.
The room where I ask these questions is in a foreboding building at 26 Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. Inside, the building branches into hallways, offices, courtrooms, and waiting rooms. There are few signs and few people you can ask for assistance or directions, so it's easy to get lost.
The screening room on the 12th floor has two large mahogany tables at which the children, lawyers, and interpreter sit for the interviews. Crayons and pads of paper are set out at the ends of the tables to entertain the younger kids. I have no control over the type of legal assistance the child will receive. I just listen to their stories in Spanish and note their answers in English.
It's important to record even the most minor details from each story, because a good lawyer can use them to strengthen a case in ways it might not have been evident to an interpreter. She swam across the river. She comes from San Pedro Sula. She comes from Tegucigalpa. She comes from Guatemala City.
He has not ever met his father. Yes, she has met her mother, but she doesn't remember the last time she saw her. He doesn't know if she abandoned him.
No, my father didn't send money at all. I worked in the fields. MS-13 shot my sister. She died. Yes, my uncle hit me often. No, my grandmother never hit us.
If the child answers the questionnaire correctly, he or she is more likely to have a strong case, which will increase the child's chances of being placed with a pro bono attorney. An answer is correct if it provides an attorney with a legal argument for the child to stay in the US. So in the warped world of immigration, a correct answer is when, for example, a girl reveals that her father is an alcoholic who physically or sexually abused her, or when a boy reports that he was beaten repeatedly by gang members and has the scars to prove it.
Answers like that may open doors to potential immigration relief and eventually legal status in the US. But when children don't have enough battle wounds to show, they may not have any way to successfully defend their case and will most likely be removed back to their home country.
The little girls are five and seven years old, and they're from a small village in Guatemala. We sit together at the mahogany table, and their mother observes from one of the benches in the back. The younger girl concentrates on her coloring book, a crayon in her right hand. The older one has her hands crossed as an adult might. Spanish is their second language. She's a little shy, but tries to be clear and precise in her answers.
Why did you come to the United States? I don't know. Where did you cross the border? I don't know. Texas? Arizona? Yes. Texas, Arizona.
How did you travel here? A man brought us. A coyote? No, a man.
When the younger girl turned two, their mother left them under their grandmother's care. She crossed two national borders without documents and settled in Long Island, where she had a cousin. The girls talk to their mother on the telephone, hearing stories about snow falling and traffic jams, and later, about their mother's new husband and their new baby brother.
Four years went by. One day, their grandmother told them that, in a few days, a man was going to come for them, a man who would help them get back to their mother. She told them that it would be a long trip, but that he would keep them safe.
The day before the girls left, their grandmother sewed a 10-digit telephone number on the collars of their dresses. She told them they should never take these dresses off, not even to sleep, and as soon as they reached America and met the first American policeman, they should show the inside of the dress's collar to him. He would then dial the number and let them speak to their mother. The rest would follow.
The rest did follow. They made it to the border and were detained in the icebox. They said they were colder in there than they had ever been. After that, they went to a shelter.
And a few weeks later, they were put on a plane and flown to JFK, where their mother, baby brother, and stepfather were waiting for them. Some weeks later, they received the notice to appear. These girls are so young that, in addition to translating from one language to another, I need to reconfigure the questions, shift them from the language of adults to the language of children.
27, 28, 29, did you work in your home country? What sort of work did you do? How many hours did you work each day? I reword, interpret.
What kinds of things did you do with your grandmother? We played. But besides playing? Nothing.
Did you work? Yes. What did you do? I don't remember.
We go on to questions 30 31, 32, and 33. The older girl answers them while the little one undresses a crayon and scratches its trunk with her fingernail.
Did you ever get in trouble at home when you lived in your home country? No. Were you punished if you did something wrong? No.
How often were you punished? Never. Did you or anyone in your family have an illness that required special attention? What?
The girl's answers aren't really working. They aren't working in their favor, that is. What I need to hear, though I don't want to hear it, was that they had been doing hard labor, labor that put them in danger, that they were being exploited, abused, punished. If their answers don't align with what the law considers reason enough for the right to stay, the only possible ending to their story is going to be a deportation order.
The girls are so young that, even if they had a story that secured legal intervention in their favor, they didn't know the words necessary to tell it. For children of that age, telling a story in a second language translated to a third, a round and convincing story that successfully inserts them into legal proceedings working up to their defense, is practically impossible. It's going to be very hard with the answers I'm getting to even find them a lawyer willing to take their case.
The first person I ever asked these questions to was a boy from Honduras, age 16. Let's call him Manu. Why did you come to the United States, I begin. He says nothing and looks at me and shrugs a little. I reassure him. I'm no policewoman. I'm no official anyone. I'm not even a lawyer. I'm also not a gringa, you know. In fact, I can't help you at all.
So why are you here, then? I'm just here to translate for you. And what are you? I'm a chilanga. I'm a catracho, he says.
So we were enemies. And anyway, he's right. I'm from Mexico City, and he's from Honduras.
Yeah, I say, but only enemies in soccer, and I suck at soccer, anyway, so you've already scored five goals against me. He smiles, perhaps almost laughs. I haven't won his trust, but at least I have his attention.
We proceed slowly and hesitantly. Although I try to convey my words neutrally, every question seems to either embarrass or annoy him. He answers in short sentences, sometimes only silent shrugs.
No, he had never met his father. No, he did not live with his mother in his home country. He had met her, yes, but she came and went as she pleased. She liked the streets, perhaps.
He doesn't like talking about her. He grew up with his grandmother, but she died a few months ago. His aunt is sitting in the back of the courtroom.
How do you like living with your aunt? He likes her. But even though she's family, he's never really known her. She had always been just a voice inside the telephone.
I got to question 34, the one that often opens Pandora's box but also gives the interviewer the most valuable material for building the minor's case. Did you have trouble with gangs or crime in your home country? Manu pulls a folded piece of paper from his pocket. It's a copy of a police report he filed against gang members who waited for him outside his high school every day. He's held onto the report for years now, guarded it during his journey north like a passport or a talisman.
One day, some boys from the gang Barrio 18 waited outside school for Manu and his best friend. There were too many boys for Manu to fight. He and his friend walked away. The gang members followed.
Manu and his friend started running. They ran for a block or two until there was a gunshot. Manu turned around, still running, and saw that his friend had fallen. More gunshots followed, but he carried on running.
That night, he called his aunt in New York. They decided he needed to leave the country as soon as possible. He didn't attend his friend's funeral, didn't leave the house until the day the coyotaje arrived at the door.
Question 35. Any problems with the government in your home country? If so, what happened?
My government? Write this down in your notebook. They don't do [BLEEP] for anybody like me. That's the problem.
The next time I see Manu some months later, we're in a large room on floor 20-something of a corporate building next to South Ferry. We can see Staten Island from the window and, if we stretch our necks, the Statue of Liberty.
An organization has found him pro bono lawyers in one of the most powerful and expensive corporate firms in the city. Thanks to the material evidence Manu has of his statements-- the folded slip of paper-- he has a strong case. Stronger than usual, at least. They've called me in to continue translating for him.
We sit around a large, black, lacquered table. Manu, his aunt, three lawyers who speak only English, and me. We are offered coffee and snacks. Manu's aunt and I say yes to coffee. Manu says he'll have some of everything if it's free.
I translate this into, just a cookie, please. Thanks. That's very kind of you. Everything runs smoothly until the lawyers ask if Manu is still enrolled in school. He is, he says. At Hempstead High School on Long Island, but he wants to leave as soon as possible.
Why, they want to know. They remind him that, if he wants to be considered for any type of immigration relief, he has to be enrolled in school.
Hempstead High School, he says, is a hub for MS-13 and Barrio 18. Barrio 18 knocked two teeth out of his mouth. He's missing two on the top row. MS-13 boys saved him from losing the rest of them.
Suddenly, perhaps, we all suspect Manu and want to ask questions 36 and 37. Have you ever been a member of a gang? Any tattoos? No, he has no tattoos. And no, he's never been part of any gang. MS-13 in Hempstead wants him, but he's not going to fall for it.
Hundreds of thousands of kids have made the journey north. Tens of thousands have made it to the border, thousands to New York. Why did you come to the United States, we ask.
These children might ask a similar question. Why did we risk our lives to come to this country, where we find at school, in our new neighborhoods, the very things we are running from? Hempstead is a [BLEEP] hole full of pandilleros, Manu says, full of gang members, just like Tegucigalpa.
Ira Glass
Valeria Luiselli. This is an excerpt from her book Tell Me How It Ends. She asked that I mention here on the radio that MS-13 and Barrio 18 are gangs that did not originate in Central America or in Mexico. They're originally from Los Angeles.
