Apparently I never actually posted the blog comment I wrote earlier this week, so here it is (belated):
Lauren Heidbrink’s article Recasting the Agency of Unaccompanied Youth brings up many important issues about illegal migrant children and how our immigration laws affect them. She notes that “contemporary United States immigration law still frames immigrant children as objects, recognizing the identity of a child only inasmuch as that child is a derivative of the actions, legal status, and presence of his or her parent(s)” (2). This is a very interesting concept that does not make a whole lot of sense to me, especially considering how “grown up” many of these migrant children are. In her study of Mario’s journey to (and in) America, it is especially easy to recognize how much these young children are actually treated much like adults in our government system. The detainees are treated very much like prisoners, wearing standard-issue fluorescent colored sweats to be better identified and flimsy black flip flops so they are not able to run very fast down the gravel road if they actually are able to escape. This back and fourth between a child and an adult is very confusing… shouldn’t they just stick to one idea or the other?
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