CHILDREN CROSSING BORDERS Children Crossing Borders Latin American Migrant Childhoods EDITED BY ALEJANDRA J. JOSIOWICZ AND IRASEMA CORONADO The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to twenty-two federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the University strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native Nations and Indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service. © 2022 by The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2022 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4620-6 (hardcover) ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4619-0 (paperback) ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-4621-3 (ebook) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Interior typeset and designed by Sara Thaxton in 10/14 Warnock Pro with Brandon Grotesque Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Josiowicz, Alejandra J., 1981– editor. | Coronado, Irasema, editor. Title: Children crossing borders : Latin American migrant childhoods / edited by Alejandra J. Josiowicz and Irasema Coronado. Description: Tucson : University of Arizona Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021061562 (print) | LCCN 2021061563 (ebook) | ISBN 9780816546206 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780816546190 (paperback) | ISBN 9780816546213 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Immigrant children—United States—Social conditions—21st century. | Latin Americans—United States—Social conditions—21st century. | Immigrant families—United States—Social conditions—21st century. Classification: LCC JV6600 .C55 2022 (print) | LCC JV6600 (ebook) | DDC 305.23086/9120973—dc23/eng/20220308 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061562 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021061563 Printed in the United States of America ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). CO N T E N T S Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 Part I. Educational Experiences on the Borders 1. Children of Return Migrants Crossing the Linguistic and Cultural Border in the Mexico–United States Context 21 K at h l e e n T a c e lo s k y 2. Be the Buffalo: Working for EL Success in the South 48 Mari s s a B e j a r a n o - F e r n b a ug h 3. Mobility, Racism, and Cultural Borders: Immigrant and Returned Children from the United States in the Schools of Oaxaca, Mexico 73 Mart a Rod r íg u e z- C r uz Part II. Children on the Border in Literature, Art, and Culture 4. A Civil Rights Pedagogy on Children on the Borders: The Search to Belong in Latin American and Latinx Children’s and Young Adult Literature Al e jand ra J o s io w ic z 93 Contents viii 5. The Border as a Pedagogical Object in an Integrative and Multidisciplinary Learning Approach 113 É l i s ab e t h V a lle t a n d N a n c ie B o uc ha r d 6. “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow”: Young Border Crossers’ Experiences and Embodied Knowledge in the Sonora-Arizona Borderlands 127 Val e nt i n a Glo c k n e r Part III. Best Interests of the Child Crossing Borders 7. Family Reunification and Childhoods: Is Brazil Guaranteeing the Best Interests of “Refugee” Children? 155 Pat rí ci a N a b uc o M a r t us c e lli 8. Unaccompanied Undocumented Immigrant Children and the Structural and Legal Violence of the U.S. Immigration System: A View from the Child Advocate 174 L i n a M . Ca s w e ll a n d E m ily R ue h s - N a va r r o 9. U.S.- Citizen Children of Deportees in Mexico and in the United States: So Close and Yet So Far 196 I ras e ma Co r o n a d o 10. Working in Argentina: Bolivian Children in Garment Workshops, Vegetable Farms, Stores, and Domestic Work 213 Marí a I né s P a c e c c a Conclusion 235 Contributors Index 239 243 CHAPTER 6 “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” Young Border Crossers’ Experiences and Embodied Knowledge in the Sonora-Arizona Borderlands Valentina Glockner As the Tigres del Norte song says: if they catch me today, I’ll be back tomorrow. And if they catch me again, I will be back the day after tomorrow. Wherever you go, do not fear, for you shall die where you must. —Written testimony, seventeen-year-old Introduction Every year thousands of Mexican young people are driven out of their rural and urban home communities by pressing inequality, poverty, a lack of jobs, and the failure of education to function as an engine for social mobility (Torres and Carte 2016). For many, fleeing their homes is the result of growing violence and the expansion of the activities of drug-trafficking cartels. This is particularly the case in states such as Sinaloa, Michoacán, Guerrero, Chihuahua, and Sonora, which have witnessed increasing rates of homicides and gun violence, according to official data (INEGI, n.d.; IEP 2020).1 Driven by these urgent economic and safety needs, the search for a different future for themselves and their families, and/or the desire to reunite with family members in the United States, many Mexican children try crossing the border before coming of age. A recent report from Amnesty International (AI 2021) has shown that “one in every three migrants and asylum-seekers from Central America and Mexico is a child, and half of them are unaccompanied by family members or other adults.” A significant proportion of these “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 127 cases would be eligible for asylum and international protection; however, this report has shown that most applications for asylum or protection are rejected and children/youths are immediately returned to the countries they have fled from, even though “more than 80 percent of them . . . are hoping to reunify with family members who are already residing in the USA, according to the US Department of Homeland Security” (AI 2021). A 2014 report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on unaccompanied (UnAc) migrant children on the Mexico– United States border revealed that 64 percent of the Mexican children interviewed raised potential international protection needs; 32 percent of them spoke of violence in society, 17 percent spoke of violence in the home, and 12 percent spoke of both as reasons for leaving (UNHCR 2014). Data from the National Immigration Forum have shown that an estimated 75 to 80 percent of unaccompanied children of any nationality attempting to cross the border have traveled with smugglers at some point on the route (Zak 2020). In addition to not having safe alternatives to travel, migrant children must face the threat of “systematic pushbacks and forced returns by US and Mexican authorities” and the routine denial of their right to asylum and international protection (AI 2021). According to Amnesty International’s report, from November 2020 to April 2021, the Department of Homeland Security swiftly returned approximately 95 percent of Mexican children, often in a matter of hours, due to a bilateral agreement with Mexico2 that, as Amnesty International has put it, pushes children into “harm’s way.” This also meant that “unaccompanied Mexican children were returned to Mexico more than 22 times as often as they were transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) after being apprehended by the US Border Patrol,” and that “those systematic forced returns of Mexican children by US authorities often happened without the legally required screenings of the children for fear of return to Mexico” (AI 2021). This already complex scenario has been further complicated by the summary and express deportations ordered under Title 42 because of the COVID-19 pandemic,3 which has deepened a situation of helplessness and vulnerability for unaccompanied children. Therefore, in the face of this context of systematic violation of migrant children’s human rights, it is essential to understand the ways in which borders— conceived as regimes of power and classification— affect and disrupt the lives of migrant children. I posit that young people’s experiences of border crossing constitute an “embodied knowledge” that helps us under- 128 Valentina Glockner stand the way contemporary borderization regimes produce social as well as individual suffering. The Border as Method In this chapter I address the clandestine Mexico– United States border crossing of a group of unaccompanied Mexican young people, specifically teenagers between fifteen and eighteen years of age, who attempted to cross into the United States at the Sonora-Arizona borderland. The main purpose of this work is to contribute to what Spyrou and Christou (2014, 2) pose as the understanding of “the role and significance of borders in children’s everyday lives while also recognizing the constitutive role of children in the social lives of borders and borderlands.” The arguments developed here are situated at the intersection between the anthropology/ethnography of migrant children and the studies on the Mexico– United States border. Through this approach, I argue for the importance of studying children’s relationships with borders, borderlands, and borderization processes (Glockner Fagetti 2019, 2021; Glockner and Colares 2020), not only as ways of problematizing the role of borders as physical— and symbolic— realities in children’s lives (Spyrou and Christou 2014) but also as a way of interrogating and destabilizing the ways borders produce children and children produce borders. Referring to the work of Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson (2013) on the border as method, I intend to put the anthropology of child (im)migration into dialogue with the study of the Mexico– United States border. By doing this I seek to contribute to our understanding of not only the ways in which borders mold, affect, “cut across,” and “break through” the lives of migrant children but also the ways in which borders are produced by children, both as intimate experiences and ethnographic categories, thus informing the ways in which children also “cut across” and “break through” national borders, immigration policies, and the physical, legal, and symbolic violence stemming from border and borderization regimes. By confronting and challenging borders, children and teenagers contribute not only to the permeability and destabilization of borders but also to their materialization and reification. This can be understood, as we will see, by the ways in which children understand and comply with the border as a physical and a legal demarcation while knowing that, as minors, they have certain advantages in these border encounters. This is something that has not escaped the notice of “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 129 criminal groups and drug cartels, who have transformed this advantage into a strategy for border crossing and smuggling, as children are unimputable by the legal regime. By understanding the border as method, Mezzadra and Neilson (2013) and Cordero, Mezzadra, and Varela (2019) have reflected on how borders understood as processes and phenomena play an important “world-shaping function” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013), claiming it is crucial to historicize the existence and development of borders, to ethnographically situate the evolution of their functions of demarcation and territorialization, as well as their purposes of exclusion, securitization, and production of value. Such historicizing should also pay attention to how the emergence of past and present luchas migrantes, that is, collective migrant struggles, rebel against, resist, destabilize, and transform (im)migration policies and structures of violence (Cordero, Mezzadra, and Varela 2019). Here, I aim for what can be called an “anthropological turn” on Mezzadra and Neilson’s proposal, to reflect on the Mexico– United States border and unaccompanied young people’s border crossings as what I call “embodied experiences of the border.” I state that the border as a regime and the experience of border crossing produce new individual and collective agencies, life trajectories, and meanings deeply felt and ingrained within the bodies, identities, and subjectivities of young crossers. Hence, posing the border as method, and as an “anthropological tool,” allows us to interrogate the ways in which the border and border crossing are crucial sites for the production of individual and collective experiences and knowledge. Such experiences can be extreme, pushing the limits of life and the endurance of the body4 and even producing close encounters with death while individuals attempt to cross through the desert. Being kidnapped while waiting for the opportunity to cross, deported by U.S. authorities, blocked by Mexican officials, or abducted by the very people that were supposed to provide help in crossing is also part of the challenging dynamics that push young border crossers’ minds and bodies to their limits. Such happenings drive teenagers to question how they perceive themselves and their place in the world as well as within their own families, communities, and legal systems. These occurrences leave deep emotional traces and have significant social, family, and community impacts, inciting teenagers to question whether their own country— its authorities and government— recognizes their needs, desires, and claims, as well as the very value it places on their lives. 130 Valentina Glockner According to Mezzadra and Neilson, the border as method “is above all a question of politics” (2013, 17). That means looking at the intersections between individual and collective agency and different regimes of knowledge and power, and how they interact and come into conflict, to throw light on the subjectivities that come into being through such conflicts. This allows us to understand the deep and complex interrelations between the border as a physical and material existence, as a legal and political apparatus, and as a subjective experience of what can be understood as an “embodied liminality” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013). According to Presley (2020, 95), we can interpret liminality as “the detachment of a subject from their stabilized environment” and a “period of transfer and transition from one site to the next.” But following the postcolonial turn, liminality is often referenced “not as a transitionary event, but rather a structural condition; a resonant metaphor for perpetual precarity” (95). Therefore, by “embodied liminality” I would like to refer not only to the experience of transition and detachment that border crossing might produce but also to those intersectional experiences of subjection and oppression (Viveros Vigoya 2016) stemming from lived interactions of gender, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, language, belonging, and legal status— to name a few— that are being transformed, amplified, and/or (re)produced by the border and the borderization regimes and that, more often than not, constitute a structural condition of power inequality not easily escapable by individuals. Such experiences, their effects, responses, and processes of (re)production, should be analyzed and understood not only in relation to age as an intersectional category as well but in relation to childhood as a historical and sociocultural category, and as the result of specific minorization regimes.5 The concept of “perpetual precarity” used by Presley (2020) is perhaps one of the most significant experiences of embodied liminality wrought by the border and young border crossers. It captures the structural violence, domination, exclusion, and disposability imposed by the border and border regimes of securitization and punishment on children’s and young people’s bodies and subjectivities. Therefore, the main aim of this work is to document, recognize, and value the ways in which young border crossers’ bodies are individually and collectively informed by both everyday and extraordinary events (Fassin 2002), but also how the memories and experiences resulting from such events are intimately related to the ways they, as “minorized subjects,” recall, narrate, and challenge as well as help reify the border and the borderization regime. “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 131 Embodied knowledge, and especially that which derives from children’s experiences, hasn’t been sufficiently recognized and valued as the basis for social theory (Ignatow 2007). Nevertheless, the narratives of the body and its suffering matter as fundamental sources of individual and collective sociopolitical knowledge, in this case by informing new understandings of how children and young people respond to contemporary border regimes and their (re)production of violence and exclusion. Methodological Overview The ethnographic work presented here derives from four phases of fieldwork carried out between April 2019 and February 2020 for the collective multimedia and ethnographic project Children on the Move in the Americas.6 The first three phases were conducted in the city of Nogales, Sonora, with unaccompanied Mexican teenagers who had been apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol on the Sonora-Arizona border while crossing or attempting to cross. After this, they were repatriated/deported to Mexico and accommodated in state shelters. These provided the settings for the research workshops. At the time of fieldwork, all the teenagers participating in the workshops— a number fluctuating between eight and fifteen— were male; thus, it was not possible to ascertain the perspectives and experiences of girls. Most of the participants came from the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero, while a minority came from the states of Morelos, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Veracruz. Testimonies were produced through several participatory workshops employing ethnographic self-representation methods and using graphic, oral, and written tools and platforms. The purpose was to collectively explore young people’s experiences and saberes (knowledge) about border crossing and its complexities, as well as to share, discuss, and disseminate information on the rights of “unaccompanied” migrant children/adolescents on both sides of the border. This goal was conceived given that many repatriated Mexican adolescents have been denied the right to seek refuge in the United States and a significant number of them have been recruited by organized criminal gangs operating at the border, as discussed in the following. Since the young border crossers had recently been apprehended and deported, many saw workshops as an opportunity to discuss concerns about their future and issues of having to cover the debt they had already incurred Valentina Glockner 132 with a coyote (guide) or family member that had lent them money to pay for the crossing. Others used workshops as a public and collective platform to process their harsh experiences of crossing the border. Still others used them as safe spaces to express their anger against the immigration system and its policies, especially through mockery and insults directed at Donald Trump, who emerged as the most iconic and representative figure toward whom they directed all their distilled anger and frustration for not having been able to fulfill the dream of reaching “the other side.” This safe space also allowed them to share with each other previous episodes of their lives, including many life-changing events, some of which had directly influenced their decisions to migrate. During such occasions the possibility of a private space for sharing and dialogue among them was always privileged. It is important to mention that, as it follows a mainly ethnographic approach, this work does not attempt to offer a generalizable analysis but rather to reflect on the importance and value of embodied knowledge for young border crossers and therefore for our understanding of child/youth (im)migration processes. Young Mexican Border Crossers at the Sonora-Arizona Border I wanted to cross to fulfill my dreams and raise my family, but it’s a pity they had to catch me. —Seventeen-year-old (see figure 6.1) According to U.S. Border Patrol records, between fiscal years 2013 and 2018, a total of 70,840 apprehensions of Mexican unaccompanied children (UnAc) under the age of eighteen were registered on the southwest border. During this five-year period, Mexican children were the second-largest group of UnAc children to be apprehended, after Guatemalans and followed by Salvadorans and Hondurans. Within this same period, 20147 was the year with the highest number registered of UnAc child apprehensions of any nationality and the year in which the humanitarian crisis of unaccompanied children at the US Southern border was declared by then President Barack Obama (Cowan 2014, Swanson et al. 2015). Also in 2014 the number of Mexican UnAc children apprehended reached 15,634— that is, 23 percent of the total number across all nationalities. However, 2013 was the year with the highest “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 133 FIGURE 6.1 I wanted to cross to fulfill my dreams and raise my family, but it’s a pity they had to catch me. number of UnAc Mexican children detained by Border Patrol, with 17,240 cases, representing 45 percent of the total number of unaccompanied migrant children apprehended that year (CBP 2018). After a slight decrease in the number of arrests of UnAc Mexican children during 2017 (8,877) and 2018 (10,136), in 2020 UnAc Mexican children represented the largest group of children detained at the border, with 12,364 cases. That is 48 percent of total apprehensions (CBP 2020). There are several explanations for the fluctuation in the percentage of Mexican UnAc children apprehended by Border Patrol over the past seven years. On one hand aggressive policies have been implemented by both Mexican and U.S. governments during the past couple of years, which could account for the significant decrease in the numbers of UnAc children coming from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America (Guatemala, 134 Valentina Glockner Honduras, and El Salvador) during 2020.8 These policies include the implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019,9 the closure of the United States– Mexico border due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the aggressive detention and deterrence operations implemented by Mexico between 2018 and 2020 in response to the “migrant exodus,” or arrival of the massive migrant caravans. However, there is a phenomenon particular to UnAc Mexican children that must be considered to understand the differences between apprehensions of Mexican children and children from other nationalities, which is central to explaining the increase in numbers of Mexican UnAc children at the border during 2020. According to a 2014 report from the Pew Research Center, a significant proportion of the UnAc Mexican children are apprehended multiple times, while most Central American children are apprehended a single time (Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez 2014). As stated by Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez (2014), only 24 percent of the UnAc Mexican children reported having been apprehended for the first time in their lives, while the remaining 76 percent reported that they had been apprehended multiple times before, and 15 percent of those children had been apprehended at least six times. This means that “the total number of child migrants from Mexico is lower compared with the Central American nations” (Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez 2014). In other words there is a completely different migratory dynamic for the UnAc Mexican children happening at the border. For the UnAc Mexican children, the proximity of the border and a well-established migratory tradition (Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez 2014) means they have abundant and more diversified resources, networks, and personal/ family contacts with which to attempt the clandestine crossing. It also means the possibility that they will have multiple attempts to cross with the same pollero or coyote after being deported. The high incidence of multiple crossings per individual is also an indicator that for many UnAc Mexican children and young people, and especially those between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, clandestine border crossing has become a socioeconomic survival strategy. The complexity of the phenomenon does not end there, as the data on multiple border crossings revealed by Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez (2014) is closely related to an extremely serious phenomenon that NGOs, researchers, and journalists have encountered at the border: the forced recruitment of young migrants to “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 135 act as human smugglers and drug traffickers. A body of research on this topic has been developed during recent years, showing that this issue is present in various locations and cities along the border10 (DHIA and UTEP 2017; Hernández-Hernández 2017, 2019; Hernández-Hernández and Segura 2018; Moreno Mena and Avendaño Millán 2015; Herrera and Venegas 2019; Pérez García 2019; Peña and García-Mendoza 2019). In a 2014 UNHCR study of UnAc migrant children in need of international protection on the Mexico– United States border, 38 percent of the Mexican children reported being recruited and/or exploited by the criminal industry of human smuggling. The issue of forced recruitment and exploitation by drug cartels was so common among UnAc Mexican children that UNHCR recognized them as a unique category of children in need of international protection (UNHCR 2014). As discussed later this dynamic is present on the Sonora-Arizona border, and some of the young border crossers participating in this study depicted themselves and/or other migrant people camouflaged in the customary military-like clothing provided by coyotes and transporting backpacks or packages across the border desert. In what follows I replace the category of unaccompanied child with that of the young border crosser. The first is a legal/migratory category created by the state to identify minors who travel without the company of a direct adult relative or who are in the company of an adult relative who has not been able to prove legal tutorship of the child with proper documentation. This category produces the child / young person as someone defined only by her/his minority condition, as well as by the status of being “defenseless” and “in need of protection,” defined only by the absence of an adult who can legally represent and “protect” him. Instead, I prefer the term young border crosser for two reasons: in the first place, because it establishes a difference between being a child and being a young person or adolescent, a very important differentiation for young migrants who, for several years, have led lives with significant levels of autonomy and independence from the adults who care for them or used to care for them and, second, because this category intends to make visible the agency of young migrants and their capacity to make decisions and build their own strategies to deal with the border, border regimes, and their effects. To do so it is fundamental to transcend binary views of children and childhood/youth, where migrant children are often perceived as either victims or criminals, in order to recognize the mul- Valentina Glockner 136 tiple ways and dimensions in which migrant children manifest their agency (Thompson et al. 2019). Brincar el muro (Jumping the Wall) [This is] the struggle of a young man in search of a dream. To have everything he ever wanted. May I not lack money, food, or house. —Written testimony, seventeen-year-old (see figure 6.2) The recruitment of young migrants, especially teenagers, is a critical strategy for the drug cartels, as it allows them to move drugs and groups of people across the border (DHIA and UTEP 2017); cartels know that if detained, underage migrants will usually be released immediately and therefore can return to their activities soon after deportation. Teens in Nogales reported having crossed the border carrying drug loads several times a month, demonstrating an agile and efficient trafficking network. Others reported having been given the task of coordinating transport and delivery of drug shipments across the border and guiding groups of people through the desert or functioning as coyotitos (immigrant guides or facilitators), burreros (drug carriers), brincadores (“wall jumpers” who are in charge of helping people climb the border wall, often by hooking rope ladders to the top of the fence), temporary halcones (lookouts strategically placed in different spots at the border zone who use cell phones to communicate and to help others FIGURE 6.2 [This is] the struggle of a young man in search of a dream. To have everything he ever wanted. May I not lack money, food, or house. “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 137 to cross), agüeros/aguadores (“water carriers” to provide for migrants and other cartel members), or bases (who guard meeting points in the desert for the reception of drug shipments before the pickup). The knowledge and experience of young migrant border crossers shows the existence of a complex and extremely well-articulated division of labor, revealing a full range of tasks, from the simplest to the most complex. Their testimonies reveal that the least complicated tasks— yet ones that constitute serious violations of the law and risk harsh penalties for adults— are usually assigned to young people. In addition to the careful division of tasks, I have also recognized what I call a smuggling grammar— that is, the naming, classification, and assignment of different tasks and responsibilities so that they lend themselves to a detailed division of labor. I pose this concept in dialogue with the work of Varela Huerta and McLean (2019) and their proposition of a “migratory grammar” that allows us to understand the regimes of governmentality seeking to organize, administer, and control immigrant populations and how these are confronted and resisted. This typology for the division of labor and the smuggling grammar have been crucial for, as I will discuss, the conceptualization and articulation of a complex, highly malleable, and adaptable system of clandestine border crossing and smuggling formed by the chaining of different people and tasks. Such chaining of tasks is organized in a manner that means it is not endangered in its entirety when the authorities discover or arrest those who fulfill any of its fragmented functions. In this context being underage and being Mexican are certainly perceived as advantages in performing some tasks, such as the transportation of drugs across the border. This is due to two main reasons: First, most of the children/youths are immediately returned across the border due to the bilateral agreement signed between Mexico and the United States, meaning that the links between migrant children and the cartels are not identified by the authorities, nor are their needs for international protection, due to having been victims of forced recruitment, detected. Second, it is much more difficult to prosecute a minor child or youth for this type of crime than it is an adult. For many migrant teenagers, working as a burrero is a valuable alternative when they lack the financial resources to pay for a coyote (human smuggler). This activity not only allows them to have a guide through the whole journey but offers them the safe conduct of the cartels controlling the area as well 138 Valentina Glockner as the much-needed supply of food and water during the multiple-day journey through the desert. Some of them receive a payment at the end of the crossing, after handing over the shipment. This, however, in no way means that crossing becomes easy or that young border crossers are exempt from danger. In fact, some did mention that they had been abandoned in the desert after serving as burreros to cartels and they had to turn themselves in to Border Patrol to save their lives. I can only tell [my fellow countrymen] to be very careful when attempting to cross, because they risk their lives a lot. They suffer from cold, hunger, heat, thirst. Freedom! No to racism. No more deaths. (Written testimony, sixteen-year-old; see figure 6.3) During the workshops three main themes became prominent in young people’s narratives. First, the dangers and difficulties they faced while crossing, together with the importance of sharing the strategies, equipment, and preparation that coyotes and smugglers had provided them with. For many, the journey through the desert had been an impressive and life-changing experience and a challenge whose difficulty and ordeals they did not foresee and for which they found they were not prepared. Help end the wall and to make crossing easier for Mexicans. I do not recommend that Mexicans cross to the American side, so that they don’t have to risk their lives. I am a witness. I was on the verge of losing my life for not having been prepared and not having paid for a pollero. I thank God that I am alive. The only thing I want now is to go back to my city and never return to the U.S. (Written testimony, fifteen-year-old; see figure 6.4) Second, they talked about the reasons that had led them to migrate and how their intention to reach the other side responded to the urge of providing for their family and searching for a “better life.” In some instances it was almost like they had to prove to themselves and others that their attempt to migrate was a legitimate one and that they were well-meant and hardworking people. In the background of such narratives and justifications, the effects of the xenophobic and racist statements made by President Trump against migrants and Mexicans during the previous months could be perceived. FIGURE 6.3 For Donald Trump: Freedom [gua, gua, gua (dog barking)]. No to racism. Remove the wall. No more deaths. No more surveillance. FIGURE 6.4 Free transit. Help end the border wall, so crossing can be easier for Mexicans. 140 Valentina Glockner I came to help my family. I have suffered much. I’ve tried it five times, but I still don’t give up. I have been kidnapped once, but I don’t give up, I know I’m strong. My story is true. Have courage, life goes on! (Written testimony, seventeen-year-old) Third, teenagers shared emotions of anger and frustration at not having succeeded in crossing the border. They tended to direct these emotions toward two stereotypical figures: the U.S. president, Donald Trump, and the “Central American migrant.” President Trump was the authority they perceived as the most despotic and insensitive, and they confronted his authority with the tools at their disposal: insult and mockery. At the same time, they perceived him as the one with the capacity to almost immediately overturn and change immigration policy. Therefore, some young people also sent messages urging him to open the border and let them through. The “Central American migrant,” on the other hand, was turned into the culprit for the extremely violent and unequal circumstances they encountered at the border— for example, the necessity of passing through remote and dangerous territories and exacerbated border-securitization technologies. Therefore, the trope of the “Central American migrant” was used to blame those they perceived to be “the other,” guilty of “taking advantage of the asylum system” and, consequently, responsible for the “hardening” of immigration policies and border reinforcement. The “other migrants” were found responsible for the fact that border crossing had become “too difficult for Mexicans,” thus reproducing and strengthening the racial borderization discourses of which they themselves are victims. During the conversations it became clear that most young border crossers possessed detailed knowledge about the camouflage, communication, and concealment strategies employed by guides and cartels but had virtually no information about their rights when being detained and repatriated. Therefore, these topics were also brought into the conversations to provide important information. During the discussions some young border crossers recounted having to transport backpacks containing “tightly sealed packages” across the border in exchange for the “free” services of the coyote, while others talked about not having been asked and having no other choice. In one of the workshops, a specific methodology was proposed to the group: to pick up a printed picture of the border wall and intervene in it to express their ideas and thoughts about borders. It was an invitation to tell “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 141 their story and/or to send a message to their fellow migrants or other people who they thought needed to know about the dangers they had to face while migrating in search of a better life. Two young border crossers that we will call Antonio and Manuel,11 who called each other paisanos (fellow countrymen), as they were both from the southern state of Guerrero, and who were repatriated together, shared a drawing showing their crossing experience (see figure 6.5). In this drawing a man appears to be guiding a group of people depicted in a smaller size. He’s equipped with a radio and a water bottle and is dressed entirely in camouflage, wearing slippers made from carpet cutouts to avoid leaving footprints in the desert sand. The depiction shows three elements common to all the FIGURE 6.5 Antonio and Manuel’s representation of border crossing. 142 Valentina Glockner human figures: the iconic black gallon water jug, the camouflage cap, and the camouflage backpack. The accounts of the physical exhaustion that Antonio and Manuel had to endure, and the level of mental preparedness and control they had to exert on their emotions during the border crossing and the journey through the desert, were interwoven with the detailed accounts of the surveillance strategies and the technology they had to elude, and this was something other young border crossers shared too. Each technology and security obstacle they had to evade corresponded to a specific emotion and/or physical capacity, along with a skill, trick, or tool developed by the coyotes or smugglers, such as the use of radios, cell phones, rope ladders, water hidden in strategic places in the desert, code signs, timers, camouflage clothing, and hidden meeting points and surveillance spots (see figure 6.6). They talked about the importance of “using your senses” to stay alert to every danger and hindrance and about how some individuals were given tasks to help those coming behind cross successfully (see figure 6.6) once they had passed through the stretch of desert land where cell phone signal has been blocked by Border Patrol devices. Migrants who have already managed to cross are helping those who have just entered, so that they can also get through much easier. My experience of the U.S. is not being able to cross. But at least I made the attempt. On the one hand it’s fine, I just wanted to get to know the U.S., but now I just want to go back home and never come back to the U.S. (Written testimony, sixteen-year-old; see figure 6.6) Some teenagers had tried to cross the border up to five or six times, either by their own means or with the assistance of a coyote paid by a relative. Many of them had been returned to their home communities after every deportation, which allowed them to rest, gather new resources, and develop new relationships that, far from interrupting or impeding their journey, opened new possibilities to continue through different routes and with new strategies. During their stay at the Mexican government shelters where they are hosted after being deported, teenagers coming from central and southern states meet peers from border states and cities. During this time they develop ties of trust, friendship, and solidarity, as well as of exchange and negotiation. Being more experienced, younger border crossers living in bor- “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 143 FIGURE 6.6 From left to right: united estates, drones, SMS, guides, white house, run, sensor, migrants crossing. der cities and those who have attempted to cross multiple times share their contacts, knowledge, and advice with others. Some even offer to act as guides or coyotes once they get out from the shelters. Behind these bonds of solidarity lies a shared experience of the border as the only obstacle that prevents them from pursuing their dreams. Some stories compare the border, and the border wall, with the walls of a prison that encloses them within their own country and restricts their freedom of movement and to fulfill their most important needs and wishes (see figure 6.7). This closely resonates with the proposition of Angela Davis and Gina Dent (2001) that the prison and the border are not only increasingly similar systems but different manifestations of the same continuum of punishment. What emerges from these encounters and practices of solidarity and identification are actions and strategies of resistance and rebellion against an extremely unequal and violent border regime that robs young border crossers of any possibility of fulfilling their wishes and seeking a different future. They constitute true efforts to confront the unequal relations of power and domination at play on the border, to help others to do the same, and thus to imagine new possibilities for the fight against, and the subversion of, such domination. One could say these constitute what Rita Segato (2018) 144 Valentina Glockner FIGURE 6.7 You must smile despite everything. I just want to feel the American dream. There is only one life; attempts, a thousand. calls “counter-pedagogies of cruelty.” By this I mean to signal the actions and strategies of resistance and confrontation that arise from embodied experiences and knowledge of a border that manifests itself, in a disproportionate and preponderant way, through the violence and cruelty that its materiality exerts on young border crossers’ bodies, psyches, and subjectivities. Young “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 145 border crossers’ responses to the border regime can be thought of as ways of questioning and challenging the discourses and technologies that build “pedagogies” about desirable and undesirable bodies, and how they should be classified, processed, and filtered through borders. Following Segato’s approach, we could say that the border regime constitutes one more element that has led to the emergence of contemporary pedagogies of cruelty and is itself a result of the confluence of the capitalist, patriarchal, and nationcentric order. Final Remarks This chapter has shown that young border crossers’ experiences and knowledge constitute an important body of expertise and wisdom on the border as a space where new agencies, subjectivities, and processes of resistance are produced. Such experiences and sageness can be understood as embodied knowledge not only because it arises from intense bodily and sensorial experiences but because it allows us to understand the ways in which the border and the border regime are constantly reinstated and reinforced through the experiences of violence and vulnerability imposed on the body and subjectivity. Such experiences are central in the (re)production of technologies and rationalities that seek to discourage, punish, and control human mobility. Faced with this reality, young people respond by producing strategies and “counter-pedagogies” that question and confront the violence of a border regime that perceives them as dangerous, undesirable, and disposable. Even if these responses are merely symbolic and have little chance of transforming the border regime, they constitute practices and a saberes/knowledge that can be shared, taught, and transmitted to others, and that is where their greatest relevance and power lies. These insights also allow us to understand the new strategies developed by cartels and coyotes in response to harsh immigration policies, which have turned the Sonoran Desert into deadly territory and have led migrant children and young border crossers to confront extreme conditions of risk and vulnerability. These must be thought of as emanating directly from the fragility of the body and its capacity to endure and resist the harshness of the journey but also from the deterrence strategies and technologies populating the border. Linked to this are the strategies that cartels have developed to take advantage of the minority status of children by using them as drug and Valentina Glockner 146 people smugglers, thus transforming them and their bodies into a strategy for “border permeability.” This occurs by incorporating teenagers into a wellingrained division of labor and through the assignment of different tasks and responsibilities constituting what I call a specialized “smuggling grammar” in which, once again, the roles and tasks they must fulfill are linked to their minorization in terms of age, class, and status, to name a few. This minorization regime places children/youths at the bottom of a lucrative network for drug and human trafficking across the border that has not been sufficiently combated or understood. It is in this context of increasing border securitization, which has imposed extreme violence and exploitation on the bodies of migrant people, that the border as method and as an ethnographic tool broadens our understanding of how children and young border crossers experience the effects of immigration policies. Here I have discussed how some of these experiences speak about fragility, inferiority, and disposability internalized through the body but also about young border crossers’ ability to counteract and respond through “counter-pedagogies” that speak of agency, solidarity, and the importance of embodied knowledge. Therefore, it is crucial that we broaden our understanding of all such dynamics, not only because of the importance of recognizing and amplifying the voices and experiences of migrant and displaced children and youths, but because of the importance of creating effective policies and mechanisms to combat crimes such as exploitation, human trafficking, and forced recruitment, which keep growing amid the minorization and invisibilization of children and youths. Notes 1. 2. In Mexico homicide is now the leading cause of death for people ages fifteen to forty-four and the fourth most common among children ages five to fourteen (IEP 2020). In 2008 the United States issued a law to prevent human trafficking and signed a bilateral agreement with the Mexican government to grant differential treatment to Mexican children. As a result children are expediently returned after detention, often without proper screening to identify whether they are potential victims of forced recruitment or human trafficking (Gonzalez-Barrera and Krogstad 2019). This has resulted in 95 percent of unaccompanied Mexican minors being deported immediately after detention. According to 2014 numbers, around 97 percent were adolescents. Among them only 8 percent were girls (Gonzalez-Barrera, Krogstad, and Lopez 2014). “If They Catch Me Today, I’ll Come Back Tomorrow” 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 147 “On March 21, 2020, the President, in accordance with Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 265, determined that by reason of existence of COVID-19 in Mexico and Canada, there is a serious danger of the further introduction of COVID-19 into the United States; that prohibition on the introduction of persons or property, in whole or in part, from Mexico and Canada is required in the interest of public health. Under this order, CBP is prohibiting the entry of certain persons who potentially pose a health risk, either by virtue of being subject to previously announced travel restrictions or because they unlawfully entered the country to bypass health screening measures. To help prevent the introduction of COVID-19 into border facilities and into the United States, persons subject to the order will not be held in congregate areas for processing and instead will immediately be expelled to their country of last transit” (CBP 2021). These events are closely related to the evolution of the “prevention through deterrence” policy established by the U.S. government since 1994. “This was a policy designed to discourage undocumented migrants from attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border near urban ports of entry. Closing off these historically frequented crossing points funneled individuals attempting to cross the border illegally through more remote and depopulated regions where the natural environment would act as a deterrent to movement. It was anticipated that the difficulties people would experience while traversing dozens of miles across what the Border Patrol deemed the ‘hostile terrain’ of places such as the Sonoran Desert of Arizona would ultimately discourage migrants from attempting the journey. This strategy failed to deter border crossers and instead, more than six million people have attempted to migrate through the Sonoran Desert of Southern Arizona since 2000. At least 3,200 people have died, largely from dehydration and hyperthermia, while attempting this journey through Arizona” (Hostile Terrain 94, n.d.). I understand minorization regimes as “a social process occurring at local, regional, national and supranational levels that constructs minority groups with less political, economic, and social power than some dominant group” (Jaspers, Östman, and Verschueren 2010). In this case, migrant children and young border crossers minorization derives not only from experiences/positionalities of legal status, citizenship, class, gender, nationality but also age. I am grateful to the National Geographic Society for funding this long-standing project, developed collectively by Colectiva Infancias, and which can be consulted at www.infanciasenmovimiento.org. However, the data and analysis contained here remain my sole responsibility. More about the project, including its main goals and findings, can be found in Glockner and Álvarez (2021). This and all following years refer to fiscal year periods. The number of Guatemalan unaccompanied children decreased from 30,329 in fiscal year 2019 to 7,540 in fiscal year 2020. The number of Honduran unaccompanied children went from 20,398 in fiscal year 2019 to 3,875 in fiscal year Valentina Glockner 148 9. 10. 11. 2020, while the number of unaccompanied children from El Salvador dropped from 12,021 in fiscal year 2019 to 1,964 in fiscal year 2020 (CBP [2020?]). According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Migrant Protection Protocols are “a U.S. Government action whereby certain foreign individuals entering or seeking admission to the U.S. from Mexico— illegally or without proper documentation— may be returned to Mexico and wait outside of the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings, where Mexico will provide them with all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stay” (USDHS 2019). However, a recently published joint report by Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas and some of Mexico’s most prestigious advocacy NGOs reveals the bleak picture of human rights violations, violence, and abandonment to which Central American migrants have been subjected through the Migrant Protection Protocols (Moncada and FJEDD 2020). In some of these papers, recruited teenagers are called menores de circuito (circuit minors), a categorization that has been criticized for its emphasis on the illegal and criminal activities they are forced to perform and its strong revictimization effects. Original names have been changed for privacy and security reasons. References AI (Amnesty International). 2021. Pushed into Harm’s Way: Forced Returns of Unaccompanied Migrant Children to Danger by the USA and Mexico. London: Amnesty International. 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