What can I say about this book? It was intense, devastating, mournful, enraging...and yet, still tinged with hope. I read this through the lens of a mother. My own child being just a few scant years younger than D when they embarked on their journey to El Norte from Honduras. It was challenging and painful to read at times, but felt incredibly necessary to bear witness to the heartbreak and trauma D experienced. Given the current political climate, increasing criminalization of migrants, unjust detention and carceral abuses, D's account of their experience at the Tornillo Detention Facility in 2018 is especially important.

Detained begins with the occasional journal entry by D, detailing aspects of his life in the small town of Naranjito, Honduras. Primarily raised by their grandmother, who they refer to as Tia (aunt), alongside their younger cousin Miguelito and uncle Felipe. Even before embarking on the journey north, circumstances force D into a caregiver role beyond their childhood years: an auto accident that kills his uncle Felipe, and his grandmother's death soon after. In the aftermath of the loss of the only adults in their lives, D's writing shifts from personal journal entries to letters to his "Querida Tia," a recounting of their daily experiences, fears, sorrow, and petitions for care, protection, and prayers. Unable to secure sufficient work and wages to sustain both himself and Miguelito, the boys decide to embark on the dangerous journey north together. Weeks of walking and hitchhiking finally bring them to Guatemala, where they are able to connect with a distant aunt and cousins, Elias and Damian. From Guatemala, the four cousins embark on the harrowing and dangerous trek to the US-Mexico border.

There are recurring themes of connection and separation, safety and danger, despair and hope. The four cousins form a powerful bond, emphasizing how integral each became to one another in order to survive. Together they look out for one another; buoy each other in the face of hunger, uncertainty, and violence from La Migra and cartels. Separated by the US Border Patrol immediately after crossing, D is alone during his detention at a number of processing facilities. D struggles to understand why he is being detained, why he is treated as a bed number and not a person, what happened to his cousins, why no one can give him answers, why no one cares. If ever there was a shadow of a doubt that carceral systems only perpetuate a system of violence, trauma, and harm, this book provides a firsthand account of how this impacted a child who had already endured so much loss and violence. There is, however, a glimmer of hope when D finds himself assigned to Alpha 13, a bunk at the Tornillo detention facility, where he meets Ivan, one of the adults assigned to oversee the children in this specific bunk. In Alpha 13 there is finally a semblance of consistency and genuine care for the wellbeing of it's inhabitants. And yet, the sense of safety D begins to feel there is challenged time and again when children cycle out of Tornillo in the middle of the night. No goodbye. No warning. An abrupt ending to tentative connections.

After 5 months of detention, D is finally reunited with his parents in Tenessee - parents he has only spoken to over the phone, who he has never met before, as they have been in the US since he was a baby. The epilogue provided some reassurance to the reader that D, now 20 years old, had managed to find joy and happiness, while also recognizing that they had endured more trauma than perhaps any child should ever have to experience.

This is a book that will stay with me forever.