Criminal - Wildin

Episode Date: March 3, 2017

In 2014, 16-year-old Wildin Acosta left Olancho, Honduras and traveled toward the U.S. border. When he arrived, he turned himself in to border patrol agents. He was one of 68,541 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border into the U.S. that year. We spoke to Wildin Acosta shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and after he had spent months in a detention center.  Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. And how did your mother cross the border? That's a question that I would rather not answer. When Wilden Acosta was 11, his mother traveled from Alonso, Honduras, across the border into the United States. She made her way to Durham, North Carolina, to join her husband, who'd come five years earlier to find work as an electrician.

Wilden, his older brother and two sisters, stayed behind with their grandparents and aunts and uncles. We spoke to him with the help of Riddiana Martinez, because he's more comfortable talking about himself in Spanish. Would you talk to your mother a lot when she was here and you were back in Honduras? Would she call? Would she send money home to

you and your family? Yes, I would talk to her mainly Fridays and Saturdays. And of course she sent us money. I mean, that's why she came here, and she felt the responsibility to take care of us. Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, sometimes referred to as the Northern Triangle, consistently rank among the most violent countries.

In 2014, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world, according to the UN. Wilden Acosta was 16 years old in 2014, and he says he was being harassed by a gang whose leader said he was going to kill him. This gang leader wouldn't let up, somehow got Wilden's cell phone number and began to send threatening text messages. My mother found out about the threat because I told my aunt, and my aunt told my mother, and arrangements were made, and I just had to pack up and go. Wilden packed a small backpack with one change of clothes and headed north.

How did you get from Honduras through Guatemala through Mexico? Were you taking buses? Yeah, I walked for like 10 hours, and then the rest, it was buses. Were you alone? No. Through that entire journey, I mean, there were other people as well. All moving towards the border? Todas.

Everyone. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, 68,541 unaccompanied minors crossed the border in 2014. One of them was Wilden Acosta. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. When we delivered him, you know, we just gave them 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 they took us to a holding facility. Why did you turn yourself in? It was the safest thing to do, to turn myself in. The other option would have been to go through the desert.

But I was so young that I didn't want to take that risk. It's common for unaccompanied minors to surrender at the border the way Wilden did. Because of a 1997 settlement, the government is legally required to release them to parents or relatives already in the U.S., even if those relatives are undocumented, while they wait for their deportation hearing. Did you say something to a guard? Did you say, I'm trying to get to North Carolina, my mother is there. Did you say anything to a guard? When you turn yourself in, there's no talking. You don't talk to anybody.

They don't let you talk. I was held in what's called the hieleras. People call them hieleras because they're really, really cold holding facilities. He was held there for eight days. And then from there, he was taken to another facility where he was for like 22 days. It was at the second holding place where he was, an officer approached him and said, have you talked to your mom? And he said no. And he allowed him to use the phone and call his mom. So that's when he was able to call his mom and say,

Mom, I'm here, I made it. They were all sleeping on the floor, he says, and like 70 of them, when an ICE agent walks into the facility and says, 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 you'll be reunited with your mothers. How did you get from Arizona to North Carolina? So in those shelters, sometimes they arrange with your family so that your family picks you up.

Other times they are able to pay for a flight to send you wherever it is that your family is. So in his case, they were able to pay for his flight to bring him up here to North Carolina with his mom. So was your mother there at the airport when you landed? What was it like when you landed? His family was there. His dad and him crossed each other somewhere when he arrived, and they were looking for him. But he hadn't seen him for like 10 years. So he didn't recognize him. Who recognized him was his sister who had already

previously made the journey here and she was here. And so she recognized him and said, Wilden. And then his mom saw him and gave him a hug. And then his dad said, how are you? And he said, how are you doing? Because, you know, he hadn't seen him in such a long time. So he felt like he didn't know him. The entire trip from Honduras to Durham had taken three months. Wilden enrolled at Riverside High School in Durham. Of the more than 1,800 students at Riverside,

35% are Latino. And when Wilden enrolled, his immigration status wasn't part of the conversation. In 1982, the Supreme Court held that it's unconstitutional to deny an education to any child present in the United States. Yeah, I mean, I felt like I was, you know, living a normal life. I was going to school, like 7 to 2.30 in school, and then I was working part-time.

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 working at a part-time. And so I, you know, I thought that I was living a normal life. Where were you working? I was a chef at a restaurant. And were you also making friends? Did you start to, I don't know, were you going to parties? Did you have a girlfriend? Were you hanging out? Yes, I did have a girlfriend.

And before I started dating her, my friends would invite me to parties. So yeah, I would go to parties. I wanted to, you know, relieve some stress from going to school and working all week. So you were just living your life? Yeah. On December 17, 2014, he had his first appearance at immigration court in Charlotte. He didn't have a lawyer. He was told he was being charged as a person

not lawfully in the United States. His address was verified, and the judge told him to come back in a few months. Between his first and second court dates, Wilden says he did talk to a lawyer and through a miscommunication, or maybe bad advice, believed that he was going to be deported to Honduras whether he showed up in court or not.

So you were scared that if you showed up, they would say you're going back. 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 going to go. And I'd already been in school here for a year, so I didn't go to court, I kept going to school. I didn't want to be deported.

More than a year passed without incident. And then, on January 28, 2016, Wilden was in the second semester of his senior year at Riverside. He says he planned to wake up at 6 a.m. to help his girlfriend with her Spanish homework before school. He overslept, got dressed quickly, and ran out to his car. That's when he noticed a group of people he didn't recognize. They were not wearing police or ICE clothing. They were not, their cars did not say police or ICE. You know, they were in civilian clothes and cars. 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. And then they, another one came up to me and said, what is your name? And I said, you know, Wilden. And he grabbed a piece of paper out of his pocket and said, you have an order for deportation. And that's when I was handcuffed. Were your parents home? Yeah, my dad was home, and he looked out the window when he saw that. He always did that whenever I would grab the car and drive to school. And he looked out the window and saw that they were taking me.

What did your father do? He was scared too. And, you know, with ICE, you can't win. I don't think it really dawned on me that I was being detained until we were driving off. And as we got closer to Raleigh, I looked at one of the ICE agents 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. Wilden was one of 336 people picked up in the first few months of 2016 as part of a Department of Homeland Security crackdown under President Obama called Operation Border

Guardian. It targeted young people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala who were living in three states, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. Wilden was shuffled around to various facilities in North Carolina for weeks before being transported to Georgia. First I was in Irwin Detention Center, and that detention center was really, it was not high-tech at all. I felt like I was taken through all kinds of different ways in order to finally get there. And then from there, I was taken to Stewart Detention Center. Stewart Detention Center is in a rural Georgia town called Lumpkin.

It's the biggest immigrant detention facility in the country, and it's privately operated by CoreCivic, previously known as the Corrections Corporation of America. When you got to Stewart Detention Center, were there other young people with you? Yeah, when I first got there, I mean, I was one of the youngest and I think one 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 transferred there. Was it like jail, how you were being treated? Did it feel like you were in prison, in jail? I mean, it's a jail. It is a jail. It is a jail, and I would say the difference between a jail and immigration detention

is that in jail you know how long you're going to be there and that eventually you're going to get out. That's not the case in immigration detention. In immigration detention you can be there indefinitely, and you can be released here or you can be deported. You don't know. The day after Wilden was detained, that was, we found out on a Friday. On Monday, I have a homeroom of all Latino students.

Eight out of 23 were missing. That's a lot. That's huge. This is Ellen Holmes. She teaches Spanish at Riverside High School. So that Monday when eight of 23 were missing, were they missing because they were worried about their own safety? Yes. We noticed after Wilden was detained drop in attendance and definitely an increase in dropout rate because kids are too afraid to leave their house because they're scared they're going to get detained on the way to school. Like he was.

Exactly, like he was. Ellen Holmes and a fellow teacher mailed packages of homework to him at Stewart Detention Center so he wouldn't fall so far behind. But the packages came back, marked return to sender. She got to know Wilden because he was a member of her after school club, Destino Success, that supports the school's Latino students. The club meets every Tuesday, and Ellen says the kids are asking questions about deportation. I have a list of lawyers that I have on hand that I can hand out, which is not something you ever thought you would do as a teacher. I mean, what a wild thing to be handing out lawyers' information with their homework.

Yeah, at least they have someone that they can come to and get that. But for me as a teacher, I think the hardest thing to hear is the fear of their families getting ripped apart and never seeing a parent or a sibling again. And I don't even know, I can't even process that as an adult, so I don't know how they're doing it as kids. Do you ever worry about your job safety if you're really advocating for these kids? Yes, but I'm going to do what I think is best for them and what's best for their safety and for their life. In that case, I'm not being political. I'm just being an advocate, and I'm fighting for my kids.

And if I lose my job because of that, well, then maybe it's one I shouldn't have had anyway. In March of 2016, Wilden says he was woken up at three o'clock in the morning and told that a date had been set for his deportation. In response, students, teachers, and community members held a protest outside of Congressman G.K. Butterfield's office. They carried signs that said, Deport me instead. Butterfield worked through the weekend, petitioning the director of ICE, Sarah Saldana, to put a hold on Wilden's deportation.

And she did. That meant Wilden wasn't going to be put on a plane in the middle of the night. But it didn't get him out of Stewart Detention Center either. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him

to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics,

How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. You said that most of the other people who were being detained with you had been taken at the border. So they hadn't actually made it into a life here yet. Would you talk about that? Would they ask you questions about life here, about what it was like making it? They didn't get two years. They had been stopped sooner than you.

So, yeah, I mean, I would get questions like, hey, so since you've been here already, you know, what is life like here in the U.S.? And I would say, you know, you have to work here. You have to work for everything 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. You can't just go out to nightclubs every night

or, you know, do anything like that. You have to focus and work hard. Were there other people from Honduras? There were definitely other Hondurans there, and they would say to me, you know, talk like a Honduran, and, you there, and they would say to me, you know, talk like a Honduran. And, you know, and I would just smile because when you get here to the U.S., your tongue changes. And, you know, they just didn't know that.

But it was nice to spend time with them. On June 8th, Wilden was ordered to spend 30 days in solitary confinement for helping a fellow detainee translate a letter into English. That's where he was when his classmates graduated from Riverside. His mother was invited to the ceremony as an honored guest. By the end of the summer, he'd been in custody for six months. An attorney named Evelyn Smallwood filed a motion asking the court to reopen Wilden's case, arguing that he deserved another shot, not only because he was under 18 when he crossed the border,

but also because he was given bad legal advice. The motion was denied by the judge, and Smallwood appealed. They won the appeal, but ICE still refused to release Wilden from detention. After intense public pressure, government attorneys offered to release him on a $10,000 bond pending approval from the judge. How did you finally get word that you could go home? My deportation officer was like, yeah, you'll be here like two, three more weeks. 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 never happened before.

My attorney told me that she had come to an agreement with the ICE attorneys to give me this $10,000 bond. So did you see a judge? I did have to see the judge. After I found out from everyone, I had to go see the judge. And when I was there, the lawyers, the ICE attorneys were there. And the judge just said to me, you already know that you've been granted a bond and you need to thank the ICE attorneys here for giving you that.

At that moment, I knew that it was real. All the judge did was sign some paper, and that was that. More than $10,000 was raised in a GoFundMe campaign, and by August 13th, Wilden was back home. I went back to school, and I was both happy and sad. 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. But, you know, I think that the thing that still stuck with me

was how I was able to be released. He caught up on the schoolwork he'd missed and graduated in January. He's now working and saving money for college. He plans to study electrical engineering. You aren't safe here yet, are you? Are you still waiting for a decision about your asylum? That's right, I'm still waiting on a decision on my asylum case. So you could be deported?

Yes, I could still be denied asylum. I could still be deported. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released two memos outlining an aggressive immigration policy and warned that all undocumented immigrants are subject to deportation at any time. According to the memos, the department plans to hire 10,000 new ICE agents, open more detention facilities, and fast-track deportations. Wilden's next court date is in August. Nadia Wilson and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Alice Wilder is our intern. Special thanks to Casey Bishop and Jorge Valencia.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. Find us on Facebook, and we're on Twitter, at Criminal Show. 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 from prx is supported by the knight foundation and mailchimp celebrating creativity chaos and teamwork and thanks to ad surf for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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