My vision for Mexico is for it to be a multi-part, multi-genre series of pieces reflecting on my time along the borderlands during an immersion trip I embarked on in mid-May. The experiences I had there have touched my heart and mind in immeasurable ways and it has taken some time to process the weight of my few days there. This series will be an attempt to put into words the moments, feelings, and stories that almost feel too magnanimous to retell in a way that will do them justice. And yet I will try, for our silence will not save us. We must do the work for those who cannot.
It is hard to keep quiet when your mouth is being pried open by the president himself.
In recent weeks, post after post has filled up my newsfeed with yet another story of migrant children being separated from their parents, with whom they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. I have seen everything from grave concern for the children both lost and abused by Border Patrol agents (#WhereAreTheChildren), to snarky cartoons highlighting Americans’ skewed concerns and ideas of “cruelty” (read: caring more about animal cruelty whilst turning a blind eye to the caged children along the border), to outright appalling comments in full support of these types of “custody” and the demand for harsher protocol (read: muzzles, chains, and death).
On May 7, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Thomas Homan announced the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy to anyone crossing the border without proper documentation, including asylum seekers and parents traveling with children. Under this ruling, any individual referred for illegal entry by the Department of Homeland Security is prosecuted by the Department of Justice, as is anyone caught crossing anywhere other than legal ports of entry.
As a result of this prosecution process, thousands of migrant adults have been criminalized and are either sent to jail or deported back to their countries of origin, while their children are deemed “unaccompanied minors” and are then entered into the American foster care system or another impermanent means of care.
And while some Americans are still able to discount this devastating nationwide problem as something trivial, as something so far away—both geographically and conceptually—from their everyday lives that they are still able to scroll down to the next post and go on with their day, I feel grateful that I am unable to do the same.
On May 12, just a few days after this policy was enforced, I set off for the borderlands as a participant in an immersion trip facilitated by the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), a binational organization that works towards “humane, just, [and] workable migration between the U.S. and Mexico.” Along with seven other members of the Loyola University Maryland community, I embarked on a journey of compassion, of understanding, and ultimately, of inspiration to make a change.
In Nogales, Sonora, Mexico we spent most of our days serving meals at the comedor, KBI’s migrant relief center that offers those passing through the city a hot meal, some clean clothes, and a sense of community in an attempt to help them along on their journey, whether it be one headed northward or back down south.
It was en el comedor that I met Santiago, an eight year old boy whose family had been traveling from central Mexico. Originally from Vera Cruz, which is located in the south of Mexico, the family relocated to Michoacán in the hopes of living a life out of poverty. But only after two years, when financial prospects remained bleak, Santiago’s parents, Katia and Armando, decided that it was time to take their family on the journey that so many individuals facing similar desolation deemed as worth the risk: it was time to try and cross the border and into the U.S.
So Santiago, along with his mother, father, and his two siblings, Ajilen (sp) and Juan Armando, set out on a journey to what they hoped would be a better place, to a land that promised freedom and a better tomorrow. When I met him in el comedor, his family had already been traveling for over a month. For over a month, Santiago’s every day scenery was marked by vast stretches of pavement whose end, to him, was unmarked. Traveling from Michoacán to Sonora, they walked and rode for more than 2,000 kilometers, or a little over 1,200 miles.
And at last, after days of walking and riding to a destination unknown and a land uncertain, Santiago and his family found themselves within the relative comfort of the comedor, less than a mile away from the Nogales port of entry. Their journey had started long before they left Michoacán and was far from over, but I was glad to meet them there.
Even though Ajilen was older, Santiago was by far the chattiest of the three kids. He greeted me with the brightest of smiles when I came over to sit at his table, dimples on either side of his cheeks, eager for friendship. The eyes that were hiding behind the rim of a cowboy hat when he first entered the comedor gleamed of youthful innocence. He made it seem as though he had never seen hardship, but he and I both knew that that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The energy he radiated did not give away the length and exhaustion of weeks-long travel. I practiced my broken Spanish with him, digging into the depths of my brain for the seventh grade vocab I thought I’d never use again, and asked him as many questions as I could. He told me all about his siblings, speaking so quickly that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up. He declared their ages matter-of-factly after introducing each of them (Ajilen was nine and Juan Armando was three). Later on in our conversation, he reminded me of the word for bracelet (pulsera) as I pointed rather helplessly at the Captain America band he was wearing.
He was bright and he probably knew it. I could tell by the confidence with which he carried himself, even at such a young age. He scooted over to fill the space between us on the picnic bench and showed me the games on his father’s phone. He expertly slid pieces into their place, building planes and boats and race cars with the swipe of a finger. On his father’s phone, there was a world where travel was easy, where the only thing it took to get from one place to another was sheer will, and maybe a little bit of hand-eye coordination.
At the end of that day, as my group and I left the comedor to re-cross the border into Arizona, I ran into Armando and his family outside, chatting away with the other migrants. I knew that the question of what their next steps would be weighed down on them with the density of the desert heat, but standing all together, they were able to wave it off like a puff of cigarette smoke.
Armando’s face lit up when he saw me, flagging me down so he could introduce me to another man, a friend he had made just moments ago inside. The comedor had given life to a new family, one that was bonded together by accompaniment and compassion rather than blood and nationality.
Santiago scrambled up to me and I couldn’t help but crouch down and give him a squeeze. “Buenas suerte con todo,” I said to him, holding him against me. “Buenas suerte.”
He probably didn’t know what I meant. Despite the journey they were on, something told me that Armando made sure to paint it as a big adventure, that he made sure to preserve his children’s innocence as they braved the relentless quest of migration together.
So to Santiago, el comedor was probably just a place where people asked about his bracelet and watched as he played games on his father’s cellphone. To him, el comedor was probably just a place where people passed colorful plates filled with hot food to one another, one by one, down each table, until everyone was fed. To him, el comedor was probably just a place where he could get as much water as he wanted with the wave of his cup and a delightful little, “¡Mas agua!”
But beyond that, to Santiago and to everyone else, el comedor is a place where everyone is accounted for, where no one is illegal. Para todos, el comedor sirve como un respiro del sol del desierto, un lugar donde todos son familia.
It’s been five weeks since I met Santiago, and I think about him every day. I can’t help but wonder how he is, or let alone, where he is. Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions have all but guaranteed that he is not with Armando and Katia, or even Ajilen and Juan Armando.
At the very best, the little boy who built airplanes with his hands is in the hands of the American foster care system, officially declared a child in need of assistance (CINA). But at the very worst, the little boy who built airplanes with his hands is caged in a detention center, with no way home.
Yesterday, on June 20, the President of the United States issued an executive order that will reverse his previous mandate of family separation. But this reinstated family unity does not actually mean freedom. Instead, families will now simply be detained together, trapped within the confines of the already full detention centers that dot our national landscape.
Has our country stooped so low that putting entire families in modern day internment camps can be seen and celebrated as a step up from where we were just a few days ago?
Mr. Trump has issued this order thinking that he can silence us, but nothing about this nightmare of a reality is over. The horrors do not end with its signing. Hundreds and thousands of children have been displaced and relocated to as far away as the New York Hudson Valley and Michigan, on our nation’s opposite border. To think that the authorities have routinely (if at all) kept track of these children’s basic identification in the midst of their transportation is generous, and quite frankly, deeply naïve.
Even with this new executive order, will reunification ever come for these children?
As if casting them to places where there is little to no hope that their parents will ever find them is not cruel enough, these children are now taunted by the presence of another border, one that is not militarized and whose traversal is a mere formality— not a death sentence.
Just like so many others, Santiago’s family fled from circumstances that left them with no other choice than to risk their lives. Hundreds of Armandos and Katias have chosen to uproot their lives in the hopes that they would even be given the chance to flee. From poverty. From domestic violence. From gang violence. From death itself.
This is what it means to have no choice.
Whether or not to separate families is a choice.
Whether or not to criminalize crossing a border without documentation is a choice.
Whether or not to create modern day internment camps is a choice.
To flee your homeland, to save your family, to leave everything that is familiar for a place that is foreign in more ways than you can count so that you and your loved ones can have even the chance at something better is not a choice: It is an act of survival. One that every single human being has the right to do.
I see Santiago in every child I encounter. I see him in my five-month old baby cousin who has only ever known the warmth of my aunt’s bosom and the safety of my uncle’s grasp as he helps him sit up. I see him in my neighbors’ children who ride their bikes till the sun goes down, with beds to welcome them home when they are too tired to play any longer.
I see his smile, I hear his laugh, I feel the texture of the short-sleeved shirt he was wearing when I hugged him goodbye, when I wished him good luck.
I offered Santiago my luck because it was all I could give to him in that moment. But I’ve also given him my voice, because right now he is part of some of most voiceless in our country, in our world. And so I offer his story to all of you in hopes that you will lend him your voice, too.
Our silence will not save us. It never has, and it never will. Raise your voice and let everyone know that the kids aren’t alright. And so long as they aren’t, neither are we.
Feature Image: Courtesy of Cronkite News
RODLYN-MAE BANTING 
Leave a comment