Hope, despair in poetry by immigrant children in US lockup
After the conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, the two Koreas banned millions of people who found themselves suddenly divided from visiting each other’s territory across the world’s most heavily fortified border. Decades later, most have no word on NEW YORK (AP) — The young immigrants held in prison-like conditions at a juvenile detention center in the mountains of Virginia express despair. Some cling to pleasant memories from home. For a select few, there is hope.
For a handful of immigrants who came to the U.S. from Central America — many as unaccompanied minors — poetry has given them a chance to tell the world both about their journeys north — and through the byzantine immigration system.
“A lot happens in life, most of it sad, an occasional happiness, and sometimes you have no choice but to play the clown and laugh on the outside, even though inside we feel less than failures,” wrote one of them in a poem titled “The Future.”
The collection of poems in “American Dream,” published last year, was assembled by a Washington and Lee University professor and students who visited the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Staunton, Virginia, lockup and helped the young immigrants put pencil to paper, giving voice to a largely unheard population at the center of an increasingly heated U.S. policy debate.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that immigrants as young as 14 at the center said they were beaten, locked away in solitary confinement for long periods of time and left alone naked in cold cells. Their claims were included in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in October. The AP’s reporting also cited an adult who saw bruises and broken bones the children said were caused by guards. In court filings, officials at the detention facility denied all the allegations of physical abuse, which the lawsuit asserts happened between 2015 to 2018, during both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Republicans and Democrats in Washington said the allegations described by whether their loved ones are still alive — their governments prohibit even exchanging letters, phone calls and emails. Most of the separated family members are now in their 70s and older and eager to reunite with their long-lost relatives before they die. In South Korea, more than half of the 132,124 people who applied for past reunions have died.
There was a one-time, small scale reunion in 1985. But the reunions in their current form were first held in 2000, after the leaders of the two Koreas held a firstever the AP were alarming, and Virginia’s governor on Thursday ordered state officials to investigate the abuse claims.
The writings in “American Dream” offer another kind of sworn testimony than what is detailed in the court files, said poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, who visited the center last year and worked with the immigrants on their poems.
“Every single kid in there acknowledged it was despair without an outlet, it was a dark tomorrow without a voice,” he said.
In a poem titled “Hi, Love,” one of the immigrants wrote: “Bitterness, thank you for feeding me and giving me life. Without you I don’t know what I’d be, I’d be someone without emotions, without reason to exist or reason to live.”
In an untitled poem, another child wrote about trying to end his life six times.
“I don’t know what will happen with my life,” wrote yet another teen, in a poem called “I have a dream...” ?But I don’t worry about that. My life has been a disaster and I don’t think that will change.”
None of the poems’ authors is identified and the facility in Virginia was not identified in the book.
Cristina Casado, who manages the Office of Refugee Resettlement program at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center, wrote in a postscript of the 111-page book that the children had behavioral or criminal histories and experienced trauma in their home countries.