In this rare account from within ICE detention facilities, 14 children are followed from their arrest by US Border Patrol to the day they exit facilities for unaccompanied minors. Preschoolers and teenagers, the kids offer a range of evocative backstories: a deaf and mute 15-year-old Mayan girl; a teen from India who has walked 3,000 miles; a Guatemalan girl who has escaped domestic slavery and is on the run with her young siblings. Each child offers an account of their chaotic journey from Guatemala, India, Honduras, or Mexico and the situation that drove them to enter the US illegally. We get an intimate view of their long, difficult quest for release to US relatives and a rare, firsthand view of daily life within US detention shelters.

The author, a therapist within a major children's detention facility, offers a vivid, and often surprising, firsthand description of daily life within our immigration shelters; the complicated, often heroic efforts of shelter workers; and the processes and politics that decide if a child is deported or allowed to join family. In the epilogue, the author explains that due to Homeland Security restrictions, sharing information about the internal workings of migrant shelters forfeits any future employment. The author believes this to be the principal reason there are no other published accounts from within facilities for unaccompanied minors.