Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay In Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

Partir es morir un poco / Llegar nunca es llegar -- To leave is to die a little / To arrive is never to arrive.

Tell Me How It Ends is a short book recounting the experiences of author Valeria Luiselli as an interpreter in the New York immigration court as she deals with the child immigration crisis. The book is structured as if Luiselli is answering the 40 questions on the US immigration form. Her stories from countless children and firsthand experience is an fresh glance at the US immigration system and it makes us ask broader questions about why these crises exist and what responsibility the US has to bear.

Most children first experience gang violence in countries like El Salvador or Honduras. The death of a best friend, a sibling, or a traumatic attack on their self.

I want to gnaw at the earth with my teeth,

I want to take the earth apart bit by bit

with dry, burning bites.

I want to mine the earth till I find you,

and kiss your noble skull,

and un-shroud you, and return you.

- "Elegy" by Miguel Hernandez about the death of his childhood best friend

Their parent(s) have already fled and they send some money when they can while they're being raised by an older relative. Then they're demanded to do something or run into a sticky situation with no easy out. If they stay, the lives of their siblings or their own selves are at risk. So they hire a coyote (~$4000 for boys, $3000 for girls at the time).

from Tegucigalpa to Guatemala by bus, to the Mexican border, to Arriaga and then aboard La Bestia, to the US-Mexico border. No serious problems along the way, although I imagine there were serious things that don't seem serious to him anymore. From there to the icebox, the shelter, the airplane to JFK, and finally to Long Island... His two cousins, Patricia and Marta set off on the same journey. When he left, he explains, the same gang that had killed his best friend started harassing his two cousins. That's when his aunt decided that she's rather pay $3000 for each of her daughters and put them through the dangers of the journey than let them stay.

The icebox. Yes, it's called the icebox.

The children are treated more like carrier of diseases than children. In July 2015, for example, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AIL.A) filed a complaint after learning that in a detention center in Dilley, Texas, 250 children were mistakenly given adults strength hepatitis A vaccinations. The children became gravely ill and had to be hospitalized. By law, the maximum time a person can remain in the icebox is seventy-two hours, but children are often kept for longer, subject not only to the inhumane conditions and frigid temperatures but also to verbal and physical mistreatment. They sometimes have nowhere to lie down to sleep, are not allowed to use the bathrooms as frequently as they need to, and are underfed.

They only give out frozen sandwiches twice a day there, another teenager I once screened told me.

That's all you ate? I asked.

No, not me.

What do you mean, not you?

1 didn't eat those things.

Why not?

Because they give belly-sadness.

If the child is from Mexico or Canada, then they can't turn themselves to the border patrol and receive asylum. They will be immediately sent back as a "removable alien", which was Bush's last gift to American immigration law in his vast legacy of chingaderas, in urban Mexican slang, or nasty-shitty policies, in approximate English translation.

Immigration lawyers do what they can, though they fight an uphill battle.

Before the immigration crisis was declared in the summer of 2014, minors seeking immigration relief were given approximately twelve months to find a lawyer to represent their case before their first court hearing. But when the crisis was declared and Obama's administration created the priority juvenile docket, that window was reduced to twenty-one days. In real and practical terms, what the creation of that priority docket meant was that the cases involving unaccompanied minors from Central America were grouped together and moved to the top of the list of pending cases in immigration court. Being moved to the top of a list, in this context, was the least desirable thing at least from the point of view of the children involved. Basically, the priority juvenile docket implied that deportation proceedings against them were accelerated by 94%, and that both they and the organizations that normally provided legal representation now had much less time to build a defense.

Succinctly, Luiselli's "thesis" is:

Those children who cross Mexico and arrive at the U.S. border are not 'immigrants,' not 'illegals,' not merely 'undocumented minors.' Those children are refugees of war, and, as such, they should all have the right to asylum. But not all of them have it.

To refer to the situation as a hemispheric war would be a step forward because it would oblige us to rethink the very language surrounding the problem... But of course, a "war refugee" is bad news and an uncomfortable truth for governments, because it obliges them to deal with the problem instead of simply 'removing the illegal aliens.'

The US attitude towards child immigration is not negative, it is one of voluntary ignorance. The US is not a distant observer in the problems of South America; it has been and is an active historical participant in the circumstances from which we have the problem in the first place. While Central American "gang violence" (Barrio-18, MS-13) is a problem on the other side of the border, it is fueled by consumption of drugs in the US. The effects on the US are alarming, and you can see it in towns like Hempstead, Long Island.

I mean now that my two cousins are here with us and I have to look out for them... 'cause Hempstead is a shit-hole of pandilleros, just like Tegucigalpa.

The book ends on a sad note. As it was finished, Trump won office and what seemed like years of potential reform were about to crash and burn in face of nationalist policies. Paranoia filled the void where empathy was direly needed for these children.

Ultimately, Luiselli's Advanced Conversation students at Hofstra are able to form their own organization to fight for their beliefs. Learning meets action and the fight for the dream of America. The Teenage Immigrant Integration Association (TIIA). I hope it's going well.

These stories are important to read. Forget politics, forget right and wrong --- it's a lesson in human experience. In these types of books you'll rarely find answers, just more questions. One can hopefully never be worsened by understanding more.

There are many things that can only be understood retrospectively, when many years have passed and the story has ended. In the meantime, while the story continues, the only thing to do is tell it over and over again as it develops, bifurcates, knots around itself. And it must be told, because before anything can be understood, it has to be narrated many times, in many different words and from many different angles, by many different minds.

Thank you Yesennia for the gift.