Through Iceboxes and Kennels

Through stories and thoughtful analysis, this book shows how migration and U.S. immigration detention harms the future of immigrant children and their parents.

For decades, the United States has used detention to control immigration. Through Iceboxes and Kennels traces the rise of family migration from Central America and why the U.S. incarcerated and separated thousands of children and parents. Zayas argues that answers are found in U.S. history. The book takes the reader across the licensing of detention centers in Texas as licensed childcare facilities, holding of teenage immigrants in residential treatment centers, and the full scope of the Family Separation Policy of 2018 that unleashed a national outcry. With a storyteller's ability and from sources as varied as history, politics, and psychology, Zayas identifies four stages in Central American migration-pre-migration forces that push people from their homes; mid-migration journeys fraught with hunger, violence, and pain; detention in cold rooms, cages, and jails; and the post-detention period of settlement and adjustment. In chapter after chapter, Zayas tells the stories-sometimes harrowing, always riveting-told to him by children and parents.

Like epic narratives, there are villains and heroes, honesty and betrayal, and moments of abject desperation and of soaring valor. The book shows readers just how damaging detention is to the developing child's brain, body, and mental health. At once alarming and optimistic, Through Iceboxes and Kennels reveals the endurance of parents insistent on bringing their children to safety and security, and the inspiring gallantry of children, parents, and strangers. It is a book for those who want to understand the urgency of immigration reform and the need for humane policies and practices.