It’s been nearly a decade since Washington and Lee University Professor Seth Michelson published a book of poems written by residents of the Shenandoah Juvenile Detention Center. The kids, who ranged in age from 12-18, had crossed the border without their parents. Some had tattoos, raising the possibility of gang affiliation, and a judge considered them dangerous, but Michelson did not.
“Keep in mind that these children average less than two minutes of court time, and they don’t speak English. They don’t have legal representation," he explains. "They are being coached by coyotes — which are people who help you across the border for a fee to confess fabricated stories of violence if they get picked up, because they were told wrongly that the system would have pity on them because of their histories of violence.”
He spent three years hosting poetry workshops with these young migrants – introducing them to his students from Washington and Lee who were inspired.
“The incarcerated children loved meeting people from outside the detention center. The students from my university were deeply impacted, going on to law school to become attorneys, volunteering in their communities with incarcerated, undocumented people.”
The prisoners, who came from Mexico and Central America, also loved writing poems. Michelson said it gave them hope.
“Poetry can do that. It can give you a sense of opportunity to keep alive a spiritual flame — the flame of the soul.”
Their collected works appear in his book Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in American Maximum Security Detention. To him, it seemed, the poems were a window into how these young migrants see what is happening to them and their families.
“De la tierra creció una fruta tan rica que me puse a pensar: “¿Quién cosechó esa fruta?” From the earth grew a fruit so delicious I paused to wonder: Who harvested this fruit?”
Michelson was distressed by reports that prison staff abused some kids at the detention center in Staunton – claims that administrators denied, and then-Governor Ralph Northam called for a state investigation. It concluded the treatment of detainees did not meet the legal threshold of abuse, but the Department of Juvenile Justice pledged greater state oversight of contractors that hold kids in Virginia.
Now, Michelson has written a new book about those kids and other migrants he’s met. It’s called Hope on the Border, and it introduces readers to 13-year-old Carlitos who escaped from a gang and made his way to North America after his mother was killed, and to 15-year-old Karla who ran for her life after being shot. Michelson is speaking out on their behalf – condemning federal actions that target immigrant communities.
“We’ve got the biggest immigration budget in the world now for immigration enforcement with a $185 billion bill that’s been given to ICE — more than 80 times what we spend on labor protection in the United States. We’re going to cut $991 billion from Medicaid over the next ten years and $4 billion in aid to K-12 education. We’ve lost half the CDC budget.”
Proceeds from book sales will go to a legal defense fund for young immigrants who don’t often have lawyers during court hearings. The two juvenile detention centers in Virginia that once held young immigrants have since terminated their contracts with the federal Refugee Resettlement Service.
