00:00:01
Phoebe Judge: [Speaking to Wildin] And how
did your mother cross the border? Viridiana Martinez: ¿Cómo cruzó tu mamá
la frontera?
00:00:06
Wildin: Ah, esa pregunta, no la quiero responder,
lo siento. Viridiana: [interpreting in first person as
Wildin] That's a question that I would rather
00:00:14
not answer. Phoebe: When Wildin Acosta was eleven, his
mother traveled from Olancho, Honduras across
00:00:20
the border into the United States. She made her way to Durham, North Carolina
to join her husband who'd come five years
00:00:27
earlier to find work as an electrician. Wildin, his older brother and two sisters
stayed behind with their grandparents, and
00:00:34
aunts, and uncles. We spoke to him with the help of Viridiana
Martinez because he's more comfortable talking
00:00:40
about himself in Spanish. Phoebe: [to Wildin] Would you talk to your
mother a lot when she was here and you were
00:00:46
back in Honduras? Would she call, would she send money home
to you and, and your family?
00:00:52
Wildin: [through interpreter] Yes, I would
talk to her mainly Fridays and Saturdays.
00:01:01
And of course she sent us money. I mean, she, that's why she came here and
she felt a responsibility to take care of
00:01:08
us. [theme music begins]
Phoebe: [as narrator] Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, sometimes referred to as
the Northern triangle, consistently ranked
00:01:17
among the most violent countries. In 2014, Honduras had the highest homicide
rate in the world according to the UN.
00:01:25
Wildin Acosta was sixteen years old in 2014
and he says he was being harassed by a gang
00:01:32
whose leader said he was going to kill him. This gang leader wouldn't let up. Somehow got Wildin's cell phone number and
began to send threatening text messages.
00:01:43
Wildin: My mother found out about the threat
because I told my aunt and my aunt told my
00:01:52
mother and arrangements were made. And, and I just had to pack up and go. Phoebe: Wildin packed a small backpack with
one change of clothes and headed North.
00:02:04
Phoebe [to Wildin] How did you get from Honduras
through Guatemala, through Mexico?
00:02:10
Where you taking buses? Wildin: Yeah. I walked for like ten hours and then the rest
it was buses.
00:02:19
Phoebe: Where you alone? Wildin: No. Uh, through that entire journey. I mean, there were other people.
00:02:25
As well. Phoebe: All moving towards the border? Wildin: Everyone. Phoebe: According to U.S. Customs and border
protection data, 68,541 unaccompanied minors
00:02:40
crossed the border in 2014. One of them was Wildin Acosta. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
00:02:49
[theme music continues]
Wildin: We crossed the rio, the river, and we just sat there for like three minutes.
00:03:04
And we saw the border patrol vehicle approach. And, they asked us for identification, and
we said that, you know, we just gave them
00:03:15
our birth certificates. That's what we had on us. And so he took it, and he wrote something
else down on another piece of paper, and then
00:03:24
they took us to a holding facility. Phoebe: Why did you turn yourself in? Wildin: It was the safest thing to do, to
turn myself in.
00:03:37
The other option would've been to go through
the desert. But I was so young that I didn't want to take
that risk.
00:03:46
Phoebe: It's common for unaccompanied minors
to surrender at the border the way Wildin
00:03:51
did. Because of a 1997 settlement, the government
isn't legally required to release them to
00:03:57
parents or relatives already in the U.S. Even if those relatives are undocumented,
while they wait for their deportation hearing.
00:04:04
Phoebe: [to Wildin] Did you say something
to a guard, did you say, "I'm trying to get
00:04:10
to North Carolina. My mother is there." Did you say anything to, to a guard? Wildin: When you turn yourself in, there's
no talking.
00:04:21
You don't talk to anybody and they don't let
you talk. I was held in what's called the hielera.
00:04:28
Viridiana: Some people call them [00:05:00]
hierleras because they're really, really cold
00:04:31
holding facilities. He was held there for eight days. And then from there he was taken to another
facility where he was for like twenty-two
00:04:41
days. It was at the second holding place where he
was, an officer approached him and said, "have
00:04:49
you talked to
your mom?" And he said, no. And he allowed him to use the phone and call
his mom.
00:04:55
[soft tones accompanied by percussion begin]
So that's when he was able to call his mom
00:05:00
and say, "Mom, I'm here. I made it." They were all sleeping on the floor. He says, and like seventy of them when an
ice agent walks into the facility and says,
00:05:17
"you all are going to be fine. Nobody's going to be deported. You're just going to go to a shelter after
this and then he'll be reunited with your
00:05:28
mothers." Phoebe: [to Wildin] How did you get from Arizona
to North Carolina? Wildin: So in those shelters sometimes they
arrange with your family so that your family
00:05:43
picks you up. Other times they are able to pay for a flight
to, to send you wherever it is that your family
00:05:52
is. [Gentle tones fade out]
Viridiana: So in his case they were able to pay for his flight to bring him up here to
North Carolina and was his mom.
00:06:00
Phoebe: [to Wildin] So who was your mother
there at the airport when you landed?
00:06:04
What was it like when you landed? Viridiana: [summarizing Wildin] Okay. His family was there.
00:06:10
His dad and him crossed each other somewhere
when he arrived and they were looking for
00:06:17
him, but he hadn't seen him for like ten years. So he didn't recognize them. Who recognize them was his sister, who had
already previously made the journey here and
00:06:28
she was here. And so she recognized him and said, "Wildin!" And, um, and then, uh, his mom saw him and
gave him a hug and they, and then his dad
00:06:39
said, "how are you?" [soft electronic tones begin] And he said,
"How are you doing"? because, you know, he
00:06:45
hadn't seen him in such a long time, so he
felt like he didn't know him. Phoebe: The entire trip from Honduras to Durham
had taken three months.
00:06:54
[electronic tones continue] Wildin enrolled
at Riverside High School in Durham. Of
the more than 1800 students at Riverside,
00:07:02
35% are Latino. And when Wildin had enrolled, his immigration
status wasn't part of the conversation.
00:07:10
In 1982, the Supreme Court held that it's
unconstitutional to deny an education to any
00:07:17
child present in the United States. Wildin: Yeah, I mean, I felt like I was, you
know, living a normal life.
00:07:25
I was going to school, like 7 to 2:30. [Soft electronic tones fade out] I'm in school
and then I was working part-time.
00:07:33
I wanted to be able to help my parents pay
rent or pay a bill here and there. So from like 3 to 11, I was, I was working
at a part time.
00:07:43
And so I, you know, I thought that I was living
a normal life. Phoebe: Where were you working?
00:07:48
Wildin: As a chef at a restaurant. Phoebe: And were you also making friends? Did you start to, I don't know, were you going
to parties?
00:07:58
Did you have a girlfriend? Were you hanging out? Wildin: Yes, I did have a girlfriend.
00:08:04
And before I started dating her, my friends
would invite me to parties. So yeah, I would go to parties.
00:08:11
I wanted to, you know, relieve some stress
from going to school and working all week.
00:08:16
Phoebe: So you were just living your life? Wildin: Yeah. Phoebe: On December 17th, 2014, he had his
first appearance at Immigration Court in Charlotte.
00:08:25
He didn't have a lawyer. He was told he was being charged as a person
not lawfully in the United States.
00:08:32
His address was verified and the judge told
him to come back in a few months. Between his first and second court dates,
Wildin says he did talk to a lawyer.
00:08:42
And through a miscommunication, or maybe bad
advice, believes that he was going to be deported
00:08:47
to Honduras, whether he showed up in court
or not. Phoebe: [to Wildin] So you were scared that
if you showed up, they would say you're going
00:08:55
back? Wildin: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to go back. And so I said, if the attorney's telling me
that I'm going to be deported, then I'm not
00:09:05
going to go. And you know, I'd already been in school here
for a year. So I didn't go to court.
00:09:13
I kept going to school. I didn't want to be deported. Phoebe: More than a year passed without incident.
00:09:20
And then on January 28th, 2016, Wildin was
in the second semester of his senior year
00:09:26
at Riverside. He says, he planned to wake up at 6:00 a.m.
[00:10:00] to help his girlfriend with her
00:09:31
Spanish homework before school. He overslept, got dressed quickly and ran
out to his car.
00:09:38
That's when he noticed a group of people he
didn't recognize. Wildin: They were not wearing police or ICE
clothing.
00:09:47
Um, they were not, their cars did not say
police or ICE. You know, they were in civilian clothes and
cars.
00:09:56
So I went outside. I put my book bag in the car. And then one agent came to one side, another
agent came to the other side.
00:10:09
And then they– another one came up to me
and said, "What is your name?" And I said, "Wildin."
00:10:15
And he grabbed a piece of paper out of his
pocket and said, "You have an order for deportation."
00:10:22
And that's when I was handcuffed. Phoebe: Where your parent’s home? Wildin: Yeah.
00:10:28
My dad was home. And he saw out though he looked out the window
when he saw that.
00:10:35
He always said that whenever I would grab
the car and drive to school, and he looked
00:10:41
out the window and saw that they were taking
me. Phoebe: What did your father do?
00:10:46
Wildin: He was scared too. [Soft somber tones come in] And you know,
with ICE you can't win.
00:10:57
I don't think it really dawned on me that
I was being detained until we were driving
00:11:01
off. And then and as we got closer to Raleigh,
one of the, I looked at one of the ice agents
00:11:09
and he looked at me and he said, "this is
not personal." And I'll never forget those words but that's
when I started crying.
00:11:18
Phoebe: Wildin was one of 336 people picked
up in the first few months of 2016 as part
00:11:26
of a department of Homeland Security crackdown
under President Obama called Operation Border
00:11:32
Guardian. It targeted young people from El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala, who are living in
00:11:38
three States, Georgia, North Carolina, and
Texas. Wildin was shuffled around to various facilities
in North Carolina for weeks before being transported
00:11:48
to Georgia. Wildin: First I was in Irwin Detention Center
and that detention center was really, it was
00:11:57
not high tech at all. I felt like I was taken through all kinds
of different ways in order to finally get
00:12:04
there. And then from there I was taken to Stewart
Detention Center. Phoebe: Stewart Detention Center is in a rural
Georgia town called Lumkin.
00:12:14
It's the biggest immigrant detention facility
in the country. And it's privately operated by Core Civic,
previously known as the Corrections Corporation
00:12:23
of America. Phoebe: [to Wildin] When you got to Stewart
Detention Center, were there other young people
00:12:29
with you? Wildin: Yeah when I first got there, I mean,
I was one of the youngest and I think one
00:12:35
of the first of the teenagers that they picked
up that finally arrived there. Everyone else that I talked to there, they
had all been detained at the border and been
00:12:44
transferred there. Phoebe: Was it like jail? How you were being treated? Did it feel like you were in prison, in jail?
00:12:53
Wildin: Um, it is a jail. And I would say the difference between a jail
and immigration detention is that in jail
00:13:07
you know how long you're going to be there
and that eventually you're going to get out.
00:13:11
That's not the case in immigration detention. In immigration detention, you can be there
indefinitely.
00:13:18
And you can be released here or you can be
deported. You don't know. [somber acoustic guitar music continues then
fades into ambient sound of car driving off]
00:13:33
Ellen Holmes: The day after Wildin was detained
that was, [Ambient sounds of school, quiet
00:13:37
chatter in the background] we found out on
a Friday. On Monday I have a homeroom of all Latino
students.
00:13:43
Eight out of twenty-three were missing. That's a lot. That's huge. Phoebe: This is Ellen Holmes.
00:13:50
She teaches Spanish at Riverside High School. Phoebe: [to Ellen] So that Monday when eight
of twenty-three were missing, were they missing
00:13:57
because they were worried about their own
safety? Ellen: Yes. We noticed after Wildin was detained a drop
in attendance and definitely an increase in
00:14:07
dropout rate because kids are too afraid to
leave their house 'cause they're scared they're
00:14:12
going to get detained on the way to school. Phoebe: [to Ellen] Like he was... Ellen: Exactly like he was.
00:14:17
Phoebe: Ellen Holmes and a fellow teacher
mailed packages of homework to him at Stewart
00:14:21
Detention Center so he wouldn't fall so far
behind. But the packages came back marked "return
to sender." [00:15:00] She got to know Wildin
00:14:31
because he was a member of her afterschool
club, Destino Success, that supports the school's
00:14:36
Latino students. The club meets every Tuesday and Ellen says,
the kids are asking questions about deportation.
00:14:44
Ellen: I have a list of lawyers that I have
on hand that I can hand out, which is not
00:14:48
something you ever thought you would do as
a teacher. Phoebe: [to Ellen] I mean, what a wild thing
to be handing out lawyer's information with
00:14:54
their homework. Ellen: Yeah. At least they have someone they can come to
and get that.
00:15:02
But for me as a teacher, I think the hardest
thing to hear is the fear of their families
00:15:08
getting ripped apart. And never seeing a parent or a sibling again. And I, I don't even know.
00:15:13
I can't even process that as an adult, so
I don't know how they're doing it as kids.
00:15:18
Phoebe: [to Ellen] Do you ever worry about
your job safety if you're really advocating
00:15:22
for these kids? Ellen: Yes. But I'm going to do what I think is best for
them and what's best for their safety and
00:15:30
for their life. And in that case, I'm not being political. I'm just being an
advocate and I'm fighting for my kids.
00:15:36
And if I lose my job because of that, well
then maybe it's one I shouldn't have had anyway.
00:15:42
Phoebe: In March of 2016, Wildin says he was
woken up at three o'clock in the morning and
00:15:48
told the data been set for his deportation. In response, students, teachers, and community
members held a protest outside of Congressman
00:15:58
G.K. Butterfield's office. They carried signs that said, deport me instead. Butterfield worked through the weekend petitioning
the director of ICE Sarah Saldaña to put
00:16:09
a hold on Wildin's deportation and she did. That meant Wildin wasn't going to be put on
a plane in the middle of the night, but it
00:16:18
didn't get him out of Stewart Detention Center
either. Phoebe: [to Wildin] You said that most of
the other people who were being detained with
00:16:26
you had been taken at the border, so they
hadn't actually made it into a life here yet.
00:16:32
Would you talk about that? You know, would they ask you questions about
life here about what it was like making it,
00:16:39
you know, they, they didn't get two years,
they had been stopped sooner than you.
00:16:43
Wildin: So, yeah, I mean, I would get questions
like, "hey, so since you've been here already,
00:16:50
you know, what is life like here in the U.S.?" And, and I would say, you know, "you have
to work here, you have to work for everything
00:16:59
you have. Everything is bills. You have to work and pay rent and pay bills. And, you know, you don't, if you want to make
it here, that's what you have to do.
00:17:12
You can't just go out to nightclubs every
night or, you know, do anything like that.
00:17:17
You have to focus and work hard. Phoebe: [to Wildin] Were there other people
from Honduras?
00:17:21
Wildin: There were definitely other Hondurans
there. And they would say to me, you know, "talk
like a Honduran!"
00:17:29
And, you know, and I would just smile because
when you get here to the U.S., your tongue
00:17:36
changes. And you know, they just didn't know that. But it was, it was nice to spend time with
them.
00:17:46
Phoebe: On June 8th, Wildin was ordered to
spend thirty days in solitary confinement
00:17:51
for helping a fellow detainee translate a
letter into English. That's where he was when his classmates graduated
from Riverside.
00:17:59
His mother was invited to the ceremony as
an honored guest. [somber toned melody comes in]
By the end of the summer, he'd been in custody
00:18:06
for six months. An attorney named Evelyn Smallwood filed a
motion asking the court to reopen Wildin's
00:18:17
case, arguing that he deserves another shot. Not only because he was under 18 when he crossed
the border, but also because he was given
00:18:25
bad legal advice. The motion was denied by the judge. And Smallwood appealed. They won the appeal, but ICE still refused
to release Wildin from detention.
00:18:37
After intense public pressure, government
attorneys offered to release him on a $10,000
00:18:42
bond pending approval from the judge. Phoebe: [to Wildin] How did you finally get
word that you could go home?
00:18:51
Wildin: My deportation officer was like, "yeah,
you'll be here like two or three more weeks."
00:18:58
And then I called my lawyer and my lawyer
said, "yeah, you got a bond." And I hadn't even gone to court yet before
the judge but so it was something that had
00:19:06
never happened before. My attorney told me that she had come to an
agreement with the ICE attorneys to give me
00:19:17
this $10,000 bond. Phoebe: [to Wildin] So did you see a judge? Wildin: I did have to see the judge.
00:19:24
After I found out from everyone, I had to
go see the judge. [00:20:00] And when I was there, the lawyers,
the ICE attorneys were there.
00:19:35
And the judge just said to me, "you already
know, you know that you've been granted a
00:19:39
bond. And do you need to thank the ICE attorneys
here for giving you that." [Somber toned melody fades out] At that moment,
I, you know, I knew that it was, that it was
00:19:50
real. All the judge did was sign some paper and
that was that. Phoebe: More than $10,000 was raised in a
GoFundMe campaign.
00:19:59
And by August 13th, Wildin was back home. Wildin: I went back to school and I was both
happy and sad.
00:20:10
I was happy because I was able to go back
to my life. But I was sad because I felt like so much
time was stolen from me.
00:20:18
But, you know, I think that the thing that
still stuck with me was how I was able to be released.
00:20:25
Phoebe: He caught up on the schoolwork he'd
missed and graduated in January. He's now working and saving money for college.
00:20:34
He plans to study electrical engineering. Phoebe: [to Wildin] You aren't safe here yet,
are you?
00:20:39
Are you still waiting for a decision about
your asylum? Wildin: That's right. I'm still waiting on a decision on my asylum
case.
00:20:48
Phoebe: [to Wildin] So you could be deported? Wildin: Yes. I could still be denied asylum.
00:20:54
I could still be deported. Phoebe: Last week, the Department of Homeland
Security released two memos outlining an aggressive
00:21:02
immigration policy and warned that all undocumented
immigrants are subject to deportation at any
00:21:09
time. [soft, hopeful music comes in] According to
the memos, the department plans to hire 10,000
00:21:14
new ICE agents, open more detention facilities,
and fast track deportations. Wildin's next court date is in August.
00:21:32
[music continues]
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer. Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers.
00:21:47
Alice Wilder is our intern. Special thanks to Casey Bishop and Jorge Valencia. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations
for each episode of
00:21:56
Criminal. You can see them that thisiscriminal.com find
us on Facebook and we're on Twitter @criminalshow.
00:22:05
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North
Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,
a collection of the best podcasts around Radiotopia
00:22:17
from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation
and MailChimp celebrating creativity, chaos,
00:22:23
and teamwork. And thanks to Adserve for providing their
ad serving platform to Radiotopia.
00:22:30
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [music fades out]
[Radiotopia soundbite] END OF EPISODE.