Tell Me How It Ends

Luiselli’s daughter asks her how the stories end, and Luiselli usually answers that she doesn’t know yet. One story, in particular, fascinates her daughter, that of two young girls that Luiselli interviews. The girls’ mother left them with their grandmother and made the journey to Long Island. Five years later, the mother called and gave her grandmother instructions to send the girls along. The grandmother sews a phone number into the girls’ clothing, telling them to never remove the garments, and eventually, they are reunited with their mother. To Luiselli’s daughter, that’s how the story ends, but Luiselli knows that the next step is coming: the Notice to Appear.

Children who fail to follow the notice are deported in absentia; otherwise, they must answer a series of questions. Tellingly, they are only able to find legal pathways to citizenship if they first admit to the charge of entering illegally; “the admission of guilt, then, is a kind of door that the law holds half open” (59). Two kinds of relief, asylum and special immigrant juvenile status, are available to most migrant children in some way if the case can be properly argued, as they are often fleeing either persecution or violence at home.