Institutional Overflow: Tales from Deported Children along the Border

Institutional Overflow: Tales from Deported Children along the Border María Eugenia Hernández Sánchez In Michoacán, chatting with a young boy from Nuevo San Juan Parangaracutiro , I asked, “What would you like to be when you grow up?” To my surprise, he answered, “a doctor or a migrant.”1 The Deportation of Children and Teens Children are constantly being deported from the United States to cities across northern Mexico. A study by UNICEF-DIF reported that during 2003, 5,457 minors were deported without the company of an adult family member. In 2006, estimates were that 3,000 children were deported unaccompanied to Ciudad Juárez.2 Such complexity, of course, has deep implications for U.S.–Mexico relations. But, more specifically, it presents enormous challenges for the institutions accountable for managing children’s deportation, and in turn, directly impacts families, as they are divided and their children undergo tremendous stress while they wait in government shelters for their cases to be resolved. Even though the present work is based on recent and contemporary research, the analysis of child deportation is part of longer historical processes of social inequality that take shape in everyday encounters between children and institutions. These encounters constitute the process of deportation enforced by both the United States and Mexico. Here, I argue that deportation is a process best understood as three interlinked elements: (1) the event (detention); (2) the sites (multiple institutions); and (3) institutional practices generated over time. Rather than describing what seems to be a formal-legal process (matters of citizenship), and an informal one (migrants’ lack of documents and networks of support), what I describe and interpret here is how informal María Eugenia Hernández Sánchez is professor and researcher at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Puebla. Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 491–501 492  ✜  Journal of the Southwest and formal elements constitute the process of migration. The story of deportation presented here is based on participant-observation at Casa YMCA de Menores Migrantes de Ciudad Juárez, and research conducted in the archives of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson. Initial Displacement (Somewhere in Mexico) When a minor is detained and interrogated for the first time, he or she is usually en route from his or her place of residence to the detention point. On average, deportees will have traveled from one to fifteen days to the border. There, they reach a threshold where they must decide when and where to cross, as well as make the first payment to the pollero (slang for one who smuggles people into the United States.) The balance is paid on the U.S. side. “I left from Veracruz, in a bus organized only for people from my town.” (Pablo, 13 years, personal interview, June 2004) Children have various different reasons for crossing into the United States. What most caught my attention, however, was that, for many young people there’s simply nothing to do where they live. “I don’t do anything, I work all day. I like my work and if I have time I listen to the radio.” (Ana, 15 years, personal interview, June 2004) In some ways, such boredom suggests that there is probably just no adequate means for children and teens to identify or insert themselves into the present national project. Minors thus leave their urban or rural areas to find something else or to try something new. Sometimes, the event of crossing is a new experience—even if they are returned to Mexico. Crossing: Mexico to the United States In general terms, the children detained and later deported were often found in scrubby fields and desolate areas contiguous with the Río Bravo (Rio Grande). Most were apprehended at night and they rarely recall the exact names of places on the crossing. But by their descriptions of the Institutional Overflow  ✜  493 environment, they probably crossed at or near the area called Caseta, in Guadalupe County bordering Fabens, Texas (about one hour from downtown Ciudad Juárez). Another route is to cross over the bridge directly into El Paso, riding in vehicles and pretending to be the children or relatives of those who accompany them...