DELIA'S RETURN

The migration and deportation of an unaccompanied child

Written by: Lauren Heidbrink and Delia*

Illustrated by: Gabriela Afable

*nom de plume

I sat with Delia and her father Rigoberto in the family courtyard sipping steaming atol de elote, while two of my children played checkers with Delia’s younger brother nearby. Rigoberto remarked how much my children had grown since our first visit to San Marcos three years prior. Delia’s mother María Isabel returned to the courtyard and offered a sweater to my youngest daughter who sat on my lap tasting the sweet corn-and-milk drink. María Isabel tsk-ed: “You really should dress her more warmly. She’ll get sick here in the mountain air.”

I first met Delia at Guatemala City’s Air Force base where she was deported from a detention facility for unaccompanied children in my hometown of Chicago. I later met her parents when they arrived from San Marcos to a government facility where she was held. Over multiple visits and family outings in San Marcos, Delia and her parents gradually shared the reasons for her migration, her experiences of detention, the challenges accompanying deportation, and their hopes for the future. During this visit, Delia described her predawn return to Guatemala.

"The mattress always creaked when I rolled over." For the last four months, Delia had not slept well — the uncomfortable and noisy mattress, the buzz of the neon lights from the hallway, and the snores of seven children sleeping on bunks in her room were unsettling, but the screams of kids waking from nightmares were worse.

At 2:00 a.m., a staff member shook Delia awake. “Get up. Get your things. It’s time.”

“Time for what?,” disoriented, Delia asked.

“For your flight to Guatemala.”

Delia was being deported.

Delia threw her few personal belongings into a black trash bag, and quickly hugged her bunkmate Amelia. It had only been four months, but detention, or “shelter care” as the staff euphemistically termed it, had made Delia and Amelia inseparable. She and Amelia comforted each other when they were frustrated at the uncertainty of their futures, craving forbidden coffee, bored by the same action movies blaring on repeat, or homesick for their friends in Guatemala.

Delia’s unannounced departure prevented her from saying goodbye to her new friends and from mentally preparing for return. Delia knew this day was coming, but the facility staff explained that they do not warn children of the date or time of their imminent departures for fear that they might abscond.

“It was a difficult time. I wanted to stay in America but not in that place. I made friends there and didn’t know what would happen to them or if I’d ever see them again. They became my family, only they know what it was really like, but I also missed by family and my country. It was confusing.”

The facility’s transportation coordinator, a former Army private, drove her to Chicago O’Hare airport.

From 2010 to 2019, the number of primarily Central American and Mexican unaccompanied migrant children apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol nearly quadrupled, increasing from 18,168 to 76,020 children. Guatemalans comprise 40 percent of all unaccompanied children apprehended in the United States. According to Guatemala's Secretariat of Social Welfare, 95% of returned children are Indigenous like Delia from the country's western highlands.

Border Patrol had apprehended Delia outside of Nogales, Arizona, after a month of traveling by bus and train through Mexico and walking for two days in the Sonoran Desert. Designated an unaccompanied minor, Delia was transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and held in one of ORR’s one hundred facilities. She had hoped to reunite with her older sister living in Maryland. But her sister did not complete the necessary paperwork to secure her release, fearing the Trump administration targeting of undocumented sponsors.

Rather than remain in detention, Delia decided to request voluntary departure. Delia was flown from Chicago to Mesa, Arizona, one of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Air’s hubs, where she boarded a chartered flight to Guatemala.

From 2010 to 2014, ICE Air deported 930,435 individuals to 185 countries, with Guatemala as the most frequent destination for flights. Since 2015, ICE Air has deported approximately 100,000 people annually. ICE Air flights are big business. ICE pays an average of $8,419 per flight hour regardless of the number of people on board. An audit from Department of Homeland Security Inspector General urged ICE to fill the vacant seats as a cost-saving measure. Amid the risk of spreading Covid-19 globally, deportations to Guatemala — even of unaccompanied children — have not ceased.

Delia described her flight:

"[The transportation coordinator] handed some papers to immigration. The officer put a bracelet on me. It had my name, picture, birthdate, A[lien registration] number. We all got them. I felt like tagged cattle. They patted me down to make sure I didn’t have anything in my pockets. They even looked in my mouth. No one had shoelaces or belts. I was one of the last to get on with the other kids.

In the back of the plane, there were mostly men but also a few women. They all had handcuffs — the ones that connect their feet to their wrists. One man looked like he just walked out of the desert onto the plane; he really smelled. Everyone looked tired and nervous, like me.

It was a long flight. I kept looking out the window. I’ve never seen clouds so close. I wonder what they feel like. I wanted to wade through them.

They gave us a bag with a sandwich, a granola bar, and a bottle of water. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten all day. A little before we landed, the officers took the handcuffs off of the adults, so they could eat. I couldn’t wait to see my family. But I know that I failed them and that they would be disappointed in me. I was disappointed in myself. How would we manage?"

At Guatemala City’s Air Force base, officials directed Delia and the other 130 returnees down a metal staircase and into a nondescript cement building. They shuffled single file, heads down.

Marimba music blared as the adults lumbered into the building. To one side, a Banrural counter advertised financial services to returnees, offering to exchange U.S. dollars to quetzales. On the other side, employment signs for a multinational call center were displayed:

Encuentra las mejores ofertas de empleo en Guatemala! Find the best job offers in Guatemala!

¡Comienza con un gran empleo el día de hoy! ¡Salario mensual: Q5,500.00 incluyendo bonos! Begin a great job today! Monthly salary: 5,500 quetzales [723 USD] including bonuses!

The advertisements enticed deported English speakers to work in Guatemala’s growing industry of multinational call centers.

As the returnees sat and awaited processing, a woman enthusiastically cheered in a mixture of Spanish and K’iche’:

"¡Bienvenidos compañeros! ¡Bienvenidos héroes! Ricos o pobres, grandes o pequeños, hombre o mujer, lo que seas, son compatriotas. It ko chupan ri a tinamit ki kin ri ka winiäq. Ya estás en tu país y con tu gente. Este es tu patria.”

“Welcome, friends! Welcome heroes! Rich or poor, big or small, man or woman, whatever you are, you are compatriots. You are now in your country and with your people. This is your homeland.”

A man jeered from a white plastic chair, “There is nothing to celebrate here.”

The Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Relations) representative countered, “Because there are people who leave and never return. If you're sitting here in one of these chairs, you are someone who has risked a lot, someone who has sacrificed for your families and your communities. There is no reason to be ashamed.”

In interviews with staff processing deportees, I was repeatedly told that they were offered a menu of services — a medical exam, mental health evaluation, bus fare to return to their home communities. Across five years of research including observations of seventeen deportation flights, I never witnessed these resources.

At best, some migrants used the often broken pay phone or were offered an occasional brown bag filled with a sandwich and juice. More often, returnees were processed and released to the entrance of the military base, left to borrow a cellular phone to call a family member or to beg for bus fare.

Recognizing the growing demand for services, some bus routes relocated to the front of the military base, as did several smugglers offering deals to return to the United States. Some deportees remigrated immediately; others returned home for several weeks or months before trying again.

Deported unaccompanied minors are processed differently than adults. Delia and eight other unaccompanied minors were shuttled to a government facility called Casa Nuestras Raíces, where youth undergo screenings with a case worker, and on occasion, a psychologist and nurse. Asked a litany of the same questions, fatigued and anxious young people wait up to forty-eight hours for the arrival of family members, who often receive little to no advance notice of their child’s return.

Delia waited two days until her parents Rigoberto and María Isabel arrived. They had not been notified of the timing of their daughter’s return and had to borrow money for the fourteen-hour bus ride from a small town in San Marcos to Guatemala City.

Rigoberto and María Isabel were frightened by the trip. They had never visited Guatemala City and knew only of the notorious gangs that gun down motorists and the corrupt police that shake down bus drivers and their passengers.

After wandering through the city for three hours, Rigoberto and María Isabel arrived at the building and rang the bell. Staff told them to wait. An hour later, they were directed to a waiting area where staff instructed them to watch a video playing on a small television hung on the wall. The video recounted the violence migrants confront en route to the United States — the harsh elements, menacing gangs, thieves hopped up on cocaine, and rapists at every turn.

The video warned: “It is your responsibility to be good parents and to provide for your children. Do not send them into harm’s way.”

The video failed to mention the 3,881 homicides; 4,246 aggravated assaults; and over 2,500 missing persons in Guatemala in 2018. Ignored was the statistic that 79 percent of people live in extreme poverty or that Guatemala has skyrocketing unemployment and underemployment rates, especially among Indigenous youth. The varied reasons why young people like Delia migrate were overlooked altogether.

Instead, a case worker scolded Rigoberto and María Isabel: “If your daughter migrates again, she will likely end up dead and it will be on your heads. God will not forgive you. And, if she is returned again, she and your other children will be taken from your custody. You will be sent to jail. You must be responsible for your child; she is not responsible for you."

These were not empty threats. At risk of losing U.S. development aid, the Guatemalan Congress passed a series of anti-smuggling laws, which included fines of up to $50,000 and jail time for parents whose children arrived unaccompanied in the U.S.

This treatment was nothing new to Rigoberto and María Isabel; they had endured insults of being stupid, backwards, or brujos (witches) — in health clinics, government offices, and schools — because they are Indigenous.

Within the walls of the facility, these historically rooted racist discourses are both egregious and mundane in the ways that staff talk about and interact with Indigenous parents and youth. I observed staff threatening to call police on parents, to remove children from their custody, and to bring charges for smuggling their children. In more mundane ways, staff treated children and their parents with a lack of respect — refusing them food, being inattentive to needs for hygiene products, not allowing children to socialize with each other, refusing parents access to the facility’s restrooms, and repeatedly admonishing them for speaking in their respective Indigenous languages.

After several hours, Delia was finally released to her parents. They embraced in the waiting room. Speaking in Mam, Rigoberto welcomed his daughter home, “I’m thankful you are safe. We walk this journey together. We will manage.”

María Isabel handed Delia her güipil (blouse), faja (sash), and corte (skirt) to replace her jeans and sweatshirt, and told her, “You should be proud of who you are and where you come from.”

Delia emerged from the restroom, dressed in her multicolored traje (traditional dress). She hugged me, thanking me for the hot tea and cookies I shared with her parents during their prolonged wait and promised to remain in touch.

Turning to her parents, Delia whispered, “It’s time to go home. We are not welcome here.”

CREDITS

This narrative is based on Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation (Stanford University Press 2020), an ethnography of child migration and deportation in Central America by anthropologist Lauren Heidbrink. Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.

To learn more about this multimodal publication, please visit the American Anthropologist where you will find a framing article, a study guide, and an audio reflection with the illustrator.

Written by: Lauren Heidbrink & Delia

Illustrated by: Gabriela Afable

IMAGE CAPTIONS

Image 1: Teenage girl with long dark brown hair wearing a blue skirt, multicolored güipil (traditional blouse), green sash, and brown sandals. With her right hand, she traces the railway lines on a red and pink map of Mexico © Gabriela Afable

Image 2: Teenage girl with long dark brown hair wearing a blue skirt, multicolored güipil (traditional blouse), green sash, and brown sandals. With her right hand, she traces the railway lines on a red and pink map of Mexico © Gabriela Afable

Image 3: A daughter, mother and father in the front of a brown door of their family home. The daughter sits on a concrete step to the left and her mother stands off to the right. Both are dressed in multicolored güipiles (traditional blouses) and blue skirts and have their arms crossed in front of them. The father sits to the right on a bench wearing light blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a tan cowboy hat. Vibrantly colored clothes are hung to dry in the upper left corner. © Gabriela Afable

Image 5: Two teenaged girls—one with a white shirt and red and green bracelet and one with a red shirt—hug each other goodbye. One has a forlorn expression while the other grimaces in response to their farewell. © Gabriela Afable

Image 6: A map of the United States and Mexico with the names of U.S. states. The map includes blue dots signifying Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities that detain children. A dotted red line in Mexico indicates Delia’s journey from Guatemala to the United States. A directional red line marks her flight from Arizona where she was apprehended to the Chicago detention facility. A second directional red line marks her flight from Chicago to an ICE Air hub in Arizona, and a third directional red line marks her deportation flight to Guatemala which is located off of the map. © Gabriela Afable

Image 7: Four people wearing handcuffs are pictured from the torso to their knees. One person holds a small white piece of paper. © Gabriela Afable

Image 8: An image of white clouds and blue sky.

Image 9: Two officials dressed in blue vests escort three children on the tarmac of Guatemala City’s Air Force based. A chartered blue and white airplane is parked in the background © Gabriela Afable

Image 11: A man dressed in a blue shirt with his head looking over his right shoulder waits at an unattended welcome desk with two grey computers. On the wall is written: “Bienvenidos a Guatemala” (Welcome to Guatemala). © Gabriela Afable

Image 12: Three young people sitting at round tables in government facility where they await Guatemalan officials to release them to the custody of their family. Dressed in a white shirt and hair pulled back, Delia looks to the right. © Gabriela Afable

Image 13: The image consists of a blue and white exterior of government building with writing “Bienvenidos Casa Nuestras Raices.” © Gabriela Afable

Image 14: The background image is a patterned multicolored weaving traditional to Maya peoples of present-day Guatemala. © Gabriela Afable

Image 15: The image consists of a blue and white exterior of government building with writing “Bienvenidos Casa Nuestras Raices.” Delia is dressed in traje (traditional dress) of a multicolored güipil (blouse), dark blue corte (skirt), green faja (sash), and green and red bracelet. Her hair is pulled behind her. She holds an oversized, red satchel and stands outside of a blue and white government building with writing overhead “Bienvenidos Casa Nuestras Raices.” © Gabriela Afable

Image 16: Sky blue background color.