Uncertain Grounds

**This transcript comes from an earlier broadcast of this episode. There may be small differences between the text and the audio you hear above.**

BRIAN: You probably remember the headlines this past summer about the huge numbers of migrant kids crossing the Mexican border into the United States. Over the past year, there have been more than 60,000 of them, up from about 25,000 the year before. And in general, that’s the story, the sheer numbers of kids coming into the US. It’s often cast as a political story. And neither politicians on the left or the right seem particularly eager to welcome these kids to our nation.

ED: What we tend to hear a lot less about are the stories of the children behind the numbers. Who are they, what are they leaving behind, and what are they coming to find? For a woman up the road from us here in Virginia named Kate Reen, the individual stories are all that she hears. Kate works for Northern Virginia Family Services. There, she oversees family reunification and violence recovery programs for migrant children. She told us this story of one of her clients, a teenager from El Salvador.

KATE REEN: He had come to the country because he had witnessed a friend of his being murdered by a gang. And so then the gang knew that he had witnessed that and had come after him. They had tried to kill him, left him for dead, but had not been successful. And then his family had him flee from the hospital to come to the United States.

BRIAN: This teenager’s story is not uncommon. Most of the young people crossing the southern border are from Central America, and a big portion of them are fleeing the spread of gang violence. And like this boy, they’re coming to meet family members who are already here, many of them having come here to find economic opportunities not available to them back home.

ED: But the journey north can be treacherous. It often takes months and covers thousands of miles. Some kids ride through Mexico on top of trains because they can’t afford tickets. Some are held captive by their traffickers, who blackmail their families for more money. And when the kids finally make it to the border or cross it, there they’re detained in shelters until officials can track down their family members.

BRIAN: This is where Kate gets involved. And lest you think she’s coming in at the end of the migration story, Kate says that for many children the journey is just beginning.

KATE REEN: For a lot of our youth, they’ve been separated from their parents for maybe 10 years, sometimes more, sometimes a little less. And so their parent oftentimes came to the United States to work, and they may have left when their child was five or six years old. And now their child’s 15, 16, 17, so they don’t know each other. If you think about it, it’s like if you had a teenager from another country suddenly come live in your house.

BRIAN: Kate works with these families to help them manage their situations and their needs, needs that are often monumental. The teenager she told us about– the one who was shot by a gang and left for dead– well, he fled to the States while he was still recovering from bullet wounds.

KATE REEN: And then once he was in the shelter, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder based on his experience. And then was released to come live with his father here in northern Virginia. And so the work that we were doing at our agency was just helping his father understand, what does it mean to have a youth with post-traumatic stress disorder?

ED: So what does it mean to be a teenager with PTSD? To be living in a foreign country, immersed in a foreign culture, in a foreign house with parents you hardly know? And on top of that, be in legal limbo, uncertain as to whether you’ll even be allowed to stay in this country for very long.

As singular as that situation may seem, young people have been going through similar experiences for many, many generations in this country. Today in this show, we’re going to explore some of the stories– stories of family separation and of new beginnings here in America.

PETER: We’ll hear the story of British siblings who sailed to the United States during World War II in a convoy of evacuees under the threat of sinister U-boats, and the story of British children some three centuries earlier shipped to the New World without their consent. And we’ll hear about what it’s like to migrate from a nation within a nation.

BRIAN: But first, we’re going to consider the story of another enormous influx of unaccompanied minors. And in this earlier exodus, US officials not only welcomed the young immigrants, they encouraged the children to make the trip knowing full well they might never see their parents again.