In The Leavers Novel, written by Lisa Ko, it is a story about a young boy by the name of Deming Guo. He is an American/Chinese young boy who was born in American by his undocumented mother Polly, she is an immigrant working at a nail salon in New York. Deming after being born was sent back to China in order for Polly to save enough money to care for her son, he later returned to the United States. Around the time of Deming being eleven years old, his mother disappeared from his life for about two years due to her immigration status not being complete.
When reading The Leavers novel, you get a sense of what immigration centers are like when you’re not a United States citizen. When Polly was gone for two years out of Deming’s life, she later explains to him how she was in a detention camp due to her immigration status. Even though the novel is fiction, you can see details described about detention centers that are clear examples of today. “Two hundred women slept in two person bunks grouped in eight rows of three bunks each. None of us had any money and we couldn’t get any, unless our families knew where we were” (p.295).
You see that detention centers for immigrants look like ones described in the novel, in an article “Conditions in Migrant Detention Centers” you can see that these detention camps “[are] overcrowded [with] children and adults behind metal cages and reports of filth, illness, and untimely deaths.” The novel brings awareness to the issue of these centers that are in the United States, in the novel Polly the mother, was in a Texas detention center by the name of Ardsleyville. She wasn’t able to make calls as an example of what takes place inside these centers.
From the same article “Conditions in Migrant Detention Centers,” in 2019 details came out furthermore on the center’s conditions and how the mental health of these people was very much suffering. “One visiting physician described “extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day” at a CBP facility in Texas. Members of Congress who visited a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, reported being told by detained women that they were told to drink from toilet bowls due to a lack of running water.” The novel The Leavers gives a small glimpse of what the typical non-documented immigrant has to go through and what detention centers do to these people when not being documented properly.
References:
“Conditions in Migrant Detention Centers.” American Oversight, 20 Jan. 2021, www.americanoversight.org/investigation/conditions-in-migrant-detention-centers. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.
Ko, Lisa. The Leavers. Chapel Hill, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2017.
I’m grateful that this book and your presentation has shed more light on the state of immigrant detention centers in America. For all the news coverage on illegal immigration or how our politicians stand on the issue of illegal immigration, there seems to be much less coverage on the actual people who are the subjects of all this debate. The actual state of detention centers are rarely mentioned, and it’s heartbreaking to see the inhumane conditions a lot of these centers have.
Many people who are illegal immigrants aren’t in the best situations and continue to endure hardships in these detention centers without a way out, like Polly saying how she couldn’t make a phone call. It’s a cycle of being stuck in horrible conditions both in your country of origin and in America. These people might not be legal immigrants, but they are humans and deserve to be treated as such.
It’s very sad to see how the treatment for immigrant has not change especially for those who are detained. A couple of years ago when the state of the detention centers was exposed it revealed how inhumane the government was towards immigrants especially children. A lot of children and parents were separated from each other. This caused a lot of emotional damage to the families which the government has yet to apologize for.