It has been 36 nights since my first arrival at the camp. In a little while it will be my 37th night and nothing feels like it used to. I won’t say it isn’t normal, not after the truckloads of children arriving each day. I wish they would stay quiet those kids. I can’t blame them, but it makes it so much harder to sleep at night. I was one of them once. Just one day longer I tell myself. They’re keeping us safe they say. I just don’t know anymore. The adults have told me they’re protecting from the bad people who are human traffickers who could take me away as I migrate. I’m not exactly sure what that means. No one talks about anything important with us here. I think 13 is a good age to start knowing these things, especially if I’m responsible for taking care of myself.

 

I remember my mom telling me to be careful when immigrating because America was a dangerous place. Dangerous? I know dangerous. I’ve been told everywhere I’ve ever lived in Mexico was dangerous. “Ok Mama” I told her. “Ok Mama” is what I’ve been saying my entire life without really knowing the dangers of such compliance. “Ok Mama” I said when she told me I needed to move houses to escape the violence in the neighborhood. “Ok Mama” I said when she told me to pack my bags in the middle of the night and hop on top of the train with her. “Ok Mama” I said when she was taken away from me after she yelled “Don’t worry baby I’ll be with you soon.” I still haven’t seen her since and from the looks of it I never will. There are some kids who have been in here for over a year. Those kids treat me like their little sister. Some of them even treat me like their daughter. They remind me of Mama.

 

I can’t imagine being a baby and learning a language that they weren’t supposed to learn from these people they were never supposed to be around. Mama spoke Spanish to me in public and so that is what I used to primarily communicate with before I came here. She always wanted me to be educated and so at home she tried to teach me other languages. The language I learned the most was English and I’m extremely grateful for that. Now, I can understand what the adults are saying when they pass by the fences. Sometimes I don’t understand what they are saying but by context clues I know it’s bad. Sometimes I hear things I wish I hadn’t. Some babies arrive without an understanding of language and learn some words daily in English. The most recent baby I have witnessed this on is a little Korean baby we named Junior that arrived a couple weeks ago. He was one of the many babies that was taken from his parents in their search for asylum. He was given to me and the other older kids to take care of. We couldn’t teach him Korean and so we tried the second-best thing. Some of us spoke Spanish and some spoke other

languages but the one we have in common is English so that is what we speak to the baby and to each other. We see him learning a little more English every day. Sometimes I miss speaking Spanish. It kind of makes me feel like I’m home. Not that I feel like I’m at home a lot. But at least when I speak it, I don’t feel like I'm assimilating. Assimilating is a thing Mama made me promise I’d never do when I moved to America.

 

At night I watch over some little ones to make sure they go to bed. They are the ones that need a Mama more than anything. We tell them to hold onto their blanket foil as tight as they can so it doesn’t blow away. With everyone on the ground wrapped in their foil I think they look like burritos. Occasionally, some little kid will let go and there goes their blanket. It flies off into the night sky far away from the camp. It flies up and up and away and I watch it twinkle like a wishing star in the dark night. Sometimes right before I fall asleep, I pretend it is a star and I make a wish. I wish that I was a blanket foil flying into the sky too.

 

I try not to complain too much about sleeping here though. There are a group of kids who get randomly selected each month to stay and sleep on a clear display out front to deter immigrants. As horrible as it is, I wish I had seen them before I came. No one told us about the separation of children and their parents. Mama is seen as a criminal to the United States and is in legal trouble just for wanting to get me to a safe place. They do not leave the children alone, so they put them in these facilities, and we stay here until our parents come back. And from what I know that time will never come. It’s unbelievable how unaware the world is of this. Mama was an educated lady, and she still never knew to the extremity the xenophobia in the United States had risen. They try to make us feel like it was our parent’s fault for bringing us here, but really

this is organized governmental crime worse than any immigrant’s immigration. It feels like only yesterday we thought immigrants could become United States citizens. No one shared with other countries this is how it was. A complete trap. They now combine all children from any outside country caught immigrating and bring them here. I sometimes like to pretend their home country was worse and this is better.

 

I don’t really have friends here. Yes, I’m around tons of kids my age but at the end of the day we’re in it for ourselves. The people I hang out with the most are Jaime, Andres, Asher, Maria, Mariah, and Sal. They are all older than me, but they let me hang out with them because they say I’m mature for my age. We’re not friends but they do take care of me and will occasionally give me a left-over piece of bread or something. The nicest thing anyone has ever done for me at the camp was when I first arrived, and my foil blanket flew away. Sal shared his with me and said I reminded him of his sister so he couldn’t just let me freeze. I thought that was nice. I could share more stories, but they seem irrelevant. I try not to think about friends too much it makes me miss Mama. I always miss her.

 

I try not to talk a lot. I love talking, but not here. Everything is guarded. Like I’m being watched every second of the day. But not in a TV show type of way, more like having a stalker. Except the stalker is not obsessed with me the stalker doesn’t even like me. Every time I do speak up against mistreatment, someone, usually a guard, will speak up against me and try to make me feel small. I know I’m not small, but I let them feel like I think I am so that they stop. I know at the end of the day my voice doesn’t really matter so I usually don’t risk it. Instead, I talk inside my head. I like to pretend I’m talking to an audience. A group of people who care about

what I say. A place where I can stop thinking about anything that hurts. Sometimes I like to imagine how the audience inside my head would respond. I think right now they are feeling bad for me. I hope they know I’ll be okay. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m me from the future reassuring myself and say anything I want. Hey, it’ll be okay Mama is thinking about you right now and she’s safe. I wish that there was a story I could tell, a narrative to write. But for now, I’ll just keep the talking going. That’s all I have control over.

 

I don’t like it in the camp. It’s too uncertain. I have no idea what will happen to me next. Maybe that’s fun. Do I like spontaneity? No. I didn’t like it when they took Mama. Right now, the 37th night is starting. The sun is just a sliver of glow. It’s only sundown and already the little children are crying for their mothers. I can’t blame them, I kind of still feel like one of them. Just one more day I tell myself. I see another shiny foil blanket flying away in the sky. I wish I was a foil blanket too.

​

Articles:

Jervis, Rick. “Migrant Children at Border Are Still Being Separated from Relatives for Weeks under Biden Administration.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 7 Mar. 2021, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/03/06/migrant-children-facility-used-house-minors-separated-family/4587455001/.

“Parents of 112 Children Separated at US-Mexico Border Contacted, Court Hears.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Feb. 2021, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/27/us-mexico-border-family-separations-parents-contacted-court.

“The U.S. Detention of Children Is Only Getting Worse.” Human Rights Watch, 28 Oct. 2020, www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/03/us-detention-children-only-getting-worse#.