“I thought I’d be safe in los Estados Unidos. And now I have no idea what to think.”
D. Esperanza set down those words in a composition notebook, writing to his deceased grandmother and capturing in detail a journey fraught with hunger, exploitation, injury and neglect.
It was 2018 and Esperanza, age 13, had traveled thousands of miles from his home in Honduras seeking parents he knew only through weekly phone calls from the U.S.
Instead of finding safety and the loving embrace of a family, he was detained for months in a camp unprepared to care for a surge of youth and children entering the country seeking asylum.
“No one knows their stories — until now,” said Gerardo Iván Morales, co-author of Detained: A Boy’s Journal of Survival and Resilience, published by Atria/Primero Sueño Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
On Saturday, May 17, Nuestra Palabra, an organization that promotes Latino literature and culture, will host a reading of the newly released book at Trinity University.
Register for the event and find information about ordering the book here.
Hosted with the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva, the event will feature Morales sharing his experience of meeting Esperanza while volunteering at the Tornillo Influx Facility, a temporary immigrant detention facility for children located in Tornillo, Texas, and operated by BCFS Health and Human Services.
Morales also plans to talk about how Esperanza’s experience ties to recent incidents involving the deportation of migrants, including children as young as 2 years old.
“Detained illustrates the power of written testimony and the importance of publishing and reading books that bear witness to some of the most harrowing realities of our moment,” stated Kathryn Vomero Santos, associate professor of English at Trinity University.
The book is Esperanza’s firsthand account of his compelling migration experience and a book that Morales, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and St. Mary’s University student, hopes will prompt understanding and change.
“When I found out there were kids in cages the summer of 2018 and that they were being put in child detention centers in a tent city, that was my call to action — I was appalled,” he said. “No one knows how they’re being treated.”
Morales met Esperanza in the camp and encouraged him to write his story after reading one of the boy’s poems, “Somos Emigrantes.” At Tornillo, after it closed in 2019, Morales collected items the children had left behind — artwork, bracelets, goodbye letters.
“I stored these treasures in my closet, among them was D.’s notebook,” he said.
The two reconnected later, and Morales asked about the book, then worked to translate Esperanza’s handwritten words into English. The result is Detained.
Immigrant children are coming from immense trauma, fleeing hunger and cartels and risking their lives, Morales said. “And while they’re in the care and custody of the United States, they’re being dehumanized by unqualified personnel.”
Esperanza’s story is one of thousands and thousands, he said — voices of children who are being silenced. If people know the reality of what is still happening in child detention centers, they can come together to change it, he said.
In the book, Esperanza writes about the trauma of losing his only caretakers, a grandmother and uncle, and quitting school to work in harsh conditions to support a younger cousin.
Despair over their situation and finally the loss of a beloved pet propelled him to make the dangerous trek to the U.S. in search of parents who had migrated more than a dozen years earlier.
The young cousins had little money and no knowledge of what they would face along the way. At the border, both were captured by authorities and separated. Esperanza languished in the camp for five months before being reunited with his father.
He now works in construction in Tennessee, has reconnected with cousins and has a son of his own.
Though Esperanza’s real name is being concealed to protect his identity while he goes through the asylum process, he said he’s not afraid the book will bring attention to him.
“What I want is for people to know about this story because it is very important,” Esperanza said. “The risk is worth the protection of children.”
