Lauren Markham - The far away brothers: Two Teenage Immigrants Making a Life in America

Powerful. One of the most searing books on illegal immigration since Sonia Nazarios Enriques Journey. Kirkus Reviews, Starred

Impeccably timed, intimately reported and beautifully expressed. The New York Times

You should read The Far Away Brothers. We all should. NPR

Timely and thought-provoking. Publishers Weekly

Affecting and personal. Library Journal

N AMED ONE OF THE B EST B OOKS OF THE Y EAR BY THE N EW Y ORK T IMES B OOK R EVIEW

W INNER OF THE R IDENHOUR B OOK P RIZE

A C ALIFORNIA B OOK A WARD S ILVER M EDAL W INNER

A L OS A NGELES T IMES B OOK P RIZE F INALIST

S HORTLISTED FOR THE J . A NTHONY L UKAS B OOK P RIZE

L ONGLISTED FOR THE PEN / J ACQUELINE B OGRAD W ELD A WARD FOR B IOGRAPHY

A few years before writing this book, I received an assignment to travel to South Texas and write about the recent uptick in immigrant children crossing the border and what happened to them once theyd made it into the United States. In particular, I was focusing on unaccompanied minors: children who cross alone into the United States without papers or their parents. These children ranged in age from infants to age seventeen. Today, as in 2012 when I was first given my assignment, most of these young people were coming from countries in Central America that had grown increasingly dangerous due to gang violence and political unrest. The articles purpose was to let readers know what happened to these kids once they got to the United States, so I spent that spring digging into the massive infrastructure of apprehending, detaining, caring for, and litigating the cases of thousands of young migrants. In that year, unaccompanied minors more than tripled their historical annual average .

In the process of reporting this story about unaccompanied minors , I ended up with even more questions than when I began. I started working on another story, and then another, in hopes of finding more answers to the big questions about these important social issues. But I couldnt stop asking questions, and each question led to yet another. Why were these kids coming to the United States, and why so many? What were these children really riskingand enduringto come here, and what was the likelihood they would gain the right to stay? Would they really be better off if they did? Were their stories of the terrifying journey and the gang violence overblown, and could I take their reasons for coming to the United States at face value?

In addition to writing, I work at a high school for immigrant youth in Oakland, Californiaa school I helped launch over a decade ago. Generally, these two professional worlds and my responsibilities in themone as a journalist, one as an educatorhave felt completely separate. My work in Oakland keeps me deeply grounded in communities at home, while my reporting has taken me to places like Slovenia, Thailand, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Texas, Alaska, Mexico, Kenya, and Ethiopia. I never expected for my two careers to merge so thoroughly, for my work as a reporter to take me deeper into the world of the school where I spent nearly all my time. My reporting on unaccompanied minors changed everything.

Just after I had another big story going to press about unaccompanied minors, Mr. David, my coworker at Oakland International High School, came into my office. We really need to do something about all the kids with upcoming court dates.

What?

It turned out that a number of our newest students had been ordered to appear in immigration court in the coming months. Like the kids I had been reporting about all over the country, these new students at Oakland International were unaccompanied minors, too. By that spring of 2014, more than sixty unaccompanied minors had enrolled at Oakland International High School out of a student body of just under four hundred. By the following fall, the number surpassed ninety. Today, in 2018, unaccompanied minors make up nearly a third of Oakland International High Schools student population.

Imagine being seventeen, having traveled alone through treacherous terrain to reach a new country. You braved the desert, corrupt police and immigration officials, migrant profiteers. You heard stories of kidnappings, rapes, murders, of people losing life and limb underneath trains, of dying of thirst in the desert. And once you finally make it to the United States, youre arrested and put into detention, then ordered deported.

Pending your deportation hearing, youre released into the care of an adult, but youre in a new country where you dont speak the language. You need a lawyer, but you dont know where to find one and you dont have any money. The notion of court is terrifying, as is the prospect of being deported back home. You left home, after all, because your life was in dangerthe gangs were after you, or a family member, or the violence had gotten so bad you could no longer safely go to school, or your family didnt have enough money to put food on the table. Now youre far from your loved ones and have few people, if any, caring for your basic needs in this new country. Before you arrived, the United States felt like the promised land, but now it feels like a massive, terrifying maze, or even, at times, a cage.