Dreaming across Borders

This chapter chronicles the in-between position of Dreamers, or undocumented migrant youth who were born outside of the United States, but have lived in the United States for many years and consider it home. Although these youth are undeniably transnational, they may find themselves trapped in the United States, unable to leave or safely return to the United States. This landscape changed to some extent with DACA, which created the possibility for young people to travel outside of the United States and return through a process called Advance Parole. However, even if approved, leaving the United States through Advance Parole could result in young people being denied reentry by U.S. officials and thus permanently excluded from the country. Based on ethnographic research with a group of DACAmented migrants who were invited by the Mexican government to visit “their homeland,” this chapter considers border crossings in a time of increasingly blocked movement for the majority of migrant youth. Although all youth were granted permission to travel to Mexico through Advance Parole, their returns—first to Mexico and then to the United States—demonstrate how DACA created a curious status of being both in certain legal categories, but persistently without access to formal national membership. Their liminal position underscores the insecurities of migrant youth more generally.

Youth Negotiate Deportation

This chapter chronicles how young people experience deportation from the United States to Guatemala. It examines the policies and institutional practices that govern the removal of unaccompanied children and trace the ways in which young people and their families understand and navigate these policies and practices. Through multi-sited ethnographic research in the United States and Guatemala, the chapter reveals the various impacts of the forced “repatriation” of children, exacerbating the very conditions that spurred their migration and causing new interrelated uncertainties and related risks as “deportees.” As they are physically expelled from the United States, deported young people move out of U.S. legal systems. The effects of a forced “return” to their nations of origin produce new challenges such as feelings of isolation and vulnerability as well as danger, such that, in many ways, they continue to be in and moving through regimes of illegality. Demonstrating the long-term and geographically distant effects of the U.S. government’s deportation of children and youth, the chapter outlines the confining character of being out of a system, especially if once in it.

Reflections

Born in El Salvador, Williams Guevara Martínez left home at seventeen to escape domestic abuse and seek refuge with family members living in the United States. After a hazardous journey and crossing into the United States in a context of heightened migration, he was immediately apprehended, detained in federal custody, and ultimately released to his brother’s care in Maryland. He found excellent legal representation and was granted legal relief in the form of Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. Now with formal status, steady work, and college credits he looks back to chronicle the challenges of youth who enter the country alone and without authorization. Guevara Martínez recounts his life in El Salvador, his harrowing journey, experience in federal custody and after release, including personal attachments, educational opportunities and his commitment “to give back” by helping others like himself. He shares the lessons he learned commenting critically on violence, the migration process, human rights, and his hopes for the future..

Risky Border Crossings

De León provides a critique of “Prevention through Deterrence,” the federal border enforcement policy that encourages migrants to cross in areas characterized by extreme environmental conditions and a high risk of death. This policy has failed to deter border crossers while successfully turning the rugged terrain of southern Arizona into a killing field for all undocumented migrants. The threatening space of the U.S.-Mexico border poses particular threats to children and youth who are attempting to cross, especially when crossing without adult family members. Guides and smugglers typically facilitate the movement of young people, or—which is equally dangerous—children increasingly attempt to cross alone or with groups of other children. As children and youth are apprehended trying to enter the United States, they also enter a complicated system of immigration enforcement and detention.

Immigration Courts

This chapter draws on extended observations within federal immigration courts and interviews conducted with sitting and retired immigration judges both before and after the 2014 influx of undocumented minors who were apprehended, detained, put into deportation proceedings, and forced to appear in fast track hearings. It examines the specific challenges judges face such as staff shortages, court backlogs, and negative press regarding the judicial training immigration they receive before appointment to the bench. Since 2014, stress on judges has been heightened with the creation of expedited juvenile hearings, the increased numbers of children in removal proceedings, overloaded dockets, a dramatic reduction in the proportion of children with legal representation, and mounting numbers of in absentia deportation orders. Immigration judges share views on what they see as their weak structural position within the U.S. Department of Justice, the power imbalances that favor the government and threaten both fairness and due process protections, the inadequate legal protections for immigrant children, and the heavy toll their work exacts through exposure to horrific persecution stories, heavy caseloads, and intrusive administrative oversight..

Illegality and Children’s Power in Families

This chapter focuses on how regimes of illegality shape children’s power within families, specifically in their relationships with parents and siblings. It explores how unauthorized migration alters the experiences of three groups of children in Mexican migrant families: children in Mexico whose parents are unauthorized migrants in the United States; child migrants living in the United States, most often unauthorized like their parents; and children born in the United States to unauthorized parents. Drawing on interviews conducted with children in both Mexico and the United States, this chapter emphasizes the impact of gender, age and birth order on children’s experiences of power vis-à-vis their relationships with parents and other family members. A turn toward restrictive immigration policies has magnified the detrimental effects of enhanced enforcement and deportation regimes on families and especially on children and youth. U.S. immigration controls affect migrant and non-migrant children; both those whose parents migrate without them as well as those born to migrant parents in host countries. The specter of illegality within a family changes children’s roles and concrete responsibilities in their families as well as their feelings related to these changes.

Social Citizens and Their Right to Belong

This chapter centers on migrants who were brought to the United States as children and who grew up here. Over time, children become embedded within U.S. communities, developing personal histories and social bonds as they reach adulthood. However, many of the young male interviewees found themselves caught up in a criminal and immigration enforcement system that they may not be able to exit. As undocumented Mexican youth in the United States, they may be subject to discrimination and labeled as “criminal aliens,” a racialized practice designed to confine and expel social undesirables, despite their strong connections to families, communities, and the nation. Focusing on claims of belonging and memories of apprehension, detention, and deportation among men in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, the chapter demonstrates how, over time, multiple structures of social, economic, and political marginalization in the United States result in the expulsion of Mexican nationals who identify as U.S. social citizens.

Reflections

Bringing together the perspectives and professional practices of a social worker and immigration attorney who provide legal and social services to undocumented immigrant youth in Los Angeles, this chapter illustrates how new migrants to the United States must navigate a complex landscape that may include legal, educational, child welfare, and health care systems. These systems intersect, overlap, or diverge depending on how they come to the United States, their family networks, access to legal representation, the availability of health care services, and their educational environment. Focusing on the experiences of three youth, the authors show how different factors converge to create a range of outcomes that may serve or compromise the child’s interests. Legal status—while a potentially powerful step in changing one’s circumstances in the United States—is not necessarily sufficient for ensuring security for young immigrants. The authors advocate powerfully for an intersectional approach that can better serve young people as they move into, but also through and out of, intersecting systems.

Introduction

The book’s introduction outlines key themes and concepts of the volume. It describes how children and youth encounter, move through, or are outside of a range of legal processes, including border enforcement, immigration detention, federal custody, courts, and state processes of categorization. After reviewing relevant U.S. immigration legislation, the authors argue that, even if young people do not directly interact with state immigration systems, they are nonetheless deeply impacted by the reach of the government in its many forms. The chapter describes how young people as move into, through, and out of complicated immigration systems and institutions in the United States.

Commentary

This concluding commentary explores and contextualizes the historical evolution of the modern conception of childhood as a prolonged period of dependency and protection in contrast to pre-modern understandings of children as necessarily useful and productive members of society. The modern notion gave birth to current international charters proclaiming a range of children’s rights and best interest protections—at least for those in the global north—in the period before they mature into adulthood and become full political subjects. The preponderance of current scientific evidence demonstrates the damage that insecurities, stress, and trauma inflict on the normal development of all children. The commentary argues that ethical factors weigh strongly in favor of guaranteeing the right of children to express their opinions, live in families, escape discrimination, and access the building blocks of full personhood through food security, shelter, health care, and education. Nonetheless, migrant children experience a sustained denial of their basic rights—not due to parental neglect, individual failings, economic opportunism, or educational shortcomings but as a result of enduring colonial legacies and state enforcement regimes that govern border control, immigration status, citizenship eligibility, and the legal impact of residence.