Tracking down migrant children trapped in US custody
Reveal immigration reporter Aura Bogado came across a scrap of information last year: A girl from Honduras had been in U.S. immigration custody for nearly seven years, longer than any case she’d ever heard before. The girl spent ages 10 to 17 in various shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. On this week’s radio show, Aura does what the government didn’t: She tracks down the girl’s family members, who have been desperately trying to figure out what happened to her.
As a part of Aura’s reporting, Reveal sued the U.S. government to get data on how long children have been held in immigration custody. The mountain of data showed that nearly 1,000 children have spent more than a year in shelters.
This week, we talked to Aura about what it felt like to talk with the girl and her family and to uncover the huge number of kids who have been separated from their families for weeks, months or years.
 How did you start reporting this story?
I heard about this girl who had spent a good chunk of her childhood bouncing between shelters after being separated from her family. I had the first name of a family member who I tried to track down originally in Honduras, then in Mexico and finally in the United States – it turned out that she was in North Carolina. It was an aunt, and she was very shocked and happy to hear from me. She wanted to know what was happening. I had more information about the little girl she raised than she had herself.
What was the family's reaction when you told them that this girl was still in U.S. custody?
I would say it was very emotional for them. There was a lot of shock and relief. The family literally did not know whether or not the girl was still alive – they had no way of knowing. So the confirmation that she was, indeed, alive – regardless of how she was being kept or what had happened to her – created a sense of relief for them. And then, there was also grief at just knowing she'd been shuttered around to so many different places.
What's your perception of how this girl wound up spending more than six years in custody?
Ultimately, the responsibility to care for this girl was with the Department of Health and Human Services, specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement. That is the agency whose custody she was in that whole time. That is the agency that inexplicably lost communication with her family. And that is ultimately the agency that is responsible for institutionalizing her during her adolescence.
One of the new pieces of information in this story is the data showing that nearly 1,000 kids spent more than a year in custody. How did it feel for you when you learned that number?
I'll tell you, even after having worked on the radio story and having that number out there, it's still shocking. It should remain a shock to the conscience. Each and every single one of those kids is a life. And for an agency that's tasked with reuniting kids with family members or placing them in an appropriate foster home kind of setting, all of those kids represent failure of the system. It would be inexcusable for this to be the case for one or two kids. But we're talking about hundreds of kids. I think that says something about the system overall.
One of the most moving parts of this radio story was when you're actually able to get in contact with the girl – she has now been deported to Honduras. How did it feel for you to actually talk to this girl after reporting on her story for almost a year?
I was really anxious. I’d only ever had one very brief interaction with her, but I had heard so much about her. There was a part of me that almost doubted myself, like, “Am I going to be able to get this right? What am I going to talk to her about?” And then in the same breath being, like, “Oh, I know exactly what I want to talk to her about.” I had some fear, like, who knows, she might be really mad at me. She might not remember me. But she was very funny. She's an easy kid to talk to. She was pretty open. I'm just grateful that after so much time, I was actually able to get in touch with her.
What is the heart of this story that you want readers and listeners to think about?
I'm going to give you two answers.
One is, think about everything that you went through during ages 10 to 17. Think about the way that you pushed boundaries. Think about all of the things that you learned. How did you figure out your locker combination? How did you know when it was or wasn't safe to be outside on the street? How did you navigate your risks? Did you learn how to cook or not? So for that entire time, she was institutionalized. For all the times that she was in shelters, all of the meals are cooked for you. You are not allowed to show affection, so she didn't get a hug. She just didn't learn those kinds of basic life skills as a consequence of being institutionalized. For nothing.
That’s the other thing: She was sentenced to be in detention. When you go into a shelter, it is supposed to be a temporary kind of fix – it's a step toward something else. But she stayed there at a time of crucial development. More than 25,000 children have spent 100 days or longer in this kind of detention, and they’re not being punished for anything; they haven't been ordered there. This is supposed to be a quick step from fleeing a very violent country into being reunited with your family. DHHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) is responsible for this. We're the taxpayers who fund it. It's not like it's just, like, magic money falling out of the sky. Society as a whole is allowing this to happen to these children.
Listen to the story: An Adolescence, Seized
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Fernando Arruda is a sound designer, engineer and composer who works with lead sound designer Jim Briggs to make each episode of Reveal a unique auditory experience. He describes his job in just one word: “soundbending.” 
