The second Trump administration has ushered in a sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration policies. With the changes, and challenges, being rolled out so quickly, it can be hard to keep up.
It can be even harder to consider the impact of all this on the actual people being targeted by these changes. But D. Esperanza knows what it feels like.
When D. Esperanza was 14 years old, he spent five months in captivity in the Tornillo Influx Facility in Texas. This was one of the provisional tent cities run by the U.S. government and its contractors where the first Trump administration relocated underage migrants back in 2018.
Esperanza recently published a book about his experience called "Detained: A Boy’s Journal of Survival and Resilience." It’s the first memoir from one of the migrant children who was held in these facilities. It tells the story of Esperanza’s escape from poverty in Honduras while searching for his parents as a teenager, only to be caught and imprisoned at Tornillo.
Esperanza worked with Iván Morales to translate the journal he kept during his detention. Morales is an activist and an immigrant who spent six months working at Tornillo, offering aid and emotional support to kids who were trapped there.
Esperanza and Morales joined The Show to talk about the book and their collaboration.
Please note: Esperanza doesn’t speak English fluently, so Morales helped interpret for him during the conversation.
