Whose Child Am I?: Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children in U.S. Immigration Custody

by Susan J. Terrio

In 2014, the arrest and detention of thousands of desperate young migrants at the southwest border of the United States exposed the U.S. government's shadowy juvenile detention system, which had escaped public scrutiny for years. This book tells the story of six Central American and Mexican children who are driven from their homes by violence and deprivation, and who embark alone, risking their lives, on the perilous journey north. They suffer coercive arrests at the U.S. border, then land in detention, only to be caught up in the battle to obtain legal status. Whose Child Am I? looks inside a vast, labyrinthine system by documenting in detail the experiences of these youths, beginning with their arrest by immigration authorities, their subsequent placement in federal detention, followed by their appearance in deportation proceedings and release from custody, and, finally, ending with their struggle to build new lives in the United States. This book shows how the U.S. government got into the business of detaining children and what we can learn from this troubled history.

Genres: Immigration, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2015

Reviews

[Esme]

I'm reading this for a class and I'm actually surprise that the instructor gave the class, this book. I understand the reason as he wants to make it relevant to today's times, but the content was informative but the narrative is no different then the American views "only help does that are not criminals" although in the eyes of the Americans they are "criminals".
Secondly, the stories use here were to help people understand what the children went through in the immigration system. At the end the author clearly emphasize the Americanization the children did to get a "better life here" but only to tell that assimilation is the only way to get legal statues and have the American dream.
This book has so many contradictions that it wasn't clear where the author position was on the topic. One thing is sure is that she was there to look at what the American system and it's laws work around illegal immigrant.