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Through Iceboxes and Kennels
 Through Iceboxes and Kennels
How Immigration Detention Harms Children and
Families
LUIS H. ZAYAS
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zayas, Luis H., author.
Title: Through iceboxes and kennels: how immigration detention
harms children and families / by Luis H. Zayas.
Description: New York: Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022040690 (print) | LCCN 2022040691 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197668160 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780197668184 (epub) | ISBN 9780197668191
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. |
Immigrant families—Government policy—United States. |
Noncitizen children—Government policy—United States. |
Noncitizen detention centers—United States—History. |
Detention of persons—United States. | Unaccompanied refugee children—Care—United
States. |
Psychic trauma in children—United States. | Post-traumatic stress disorder in children—
United States.
Classification: LCC JV 6483 . Z 394 2023 (print) | LCC JV 6483 (ebook) |
DDC 325.73—dc23/eng/20221024
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040690
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040691
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197668160.001.0001
For Charlotte and Abigail, who taught me a greater love.
And to all the brave mothers and fathers who endured
losses and sacrificed everything to cross their children to
safety.
In the depths of darkness
On the verge of losing all hope
One still maintains a little glimmer of hope
Deep down inside
A tiny light
About the size of a speck
Like a distant star
Is spotted on the horizon this dark night.
Behrouz Boochani
 Contents

Notes on Names and Terms

Introduction

PART I THE STATE OF AFFAIRS

1. The Poet, Heroic Mothers, and Cash Cows
2. Ordeals and Histories of Immigration
3. I Didn’t Sign Up for This
4. Detention as Licensed Child Care—Texas-Style
5. Take the Children. Age Doesn’t Matter
6. Hiding Boys in Therapeutic Detention

PART II THE HUMAN COSTS

7. Studying Families, Hearing Their Stories
8. Stages of Central American Immigration
9. Stress, Trauma, and Children’s Development
10. I Need to Tell My Story, Too
11. Sleepless Under the Bridge in El Paso
12. A Mother’s Doubt, a Child’s Hunger
13. Sufrir, Sufrimiento, and Hallucinating the Invisible Killer Girl
14. Four Generations of Mothers and Daughters
15. All That Comes After
Acknowledgments
References
About the Contributors
Index
 Notes on Names and Terms

This book quotes and paraphrases many children and their mothers
who spoke to me and my research team. At times, the book quotes
women and kids who spoke to the press, sometimes identified by
name, often not. The names of those families I met have been
changed to protect their privacy and identities and to protect the
children, siblings, spouses, partners, parents, neighbors, friends, and
extended families they left behind or have in the United States. The
locations and names of their Central American towns and villages
have also been changed to guard against anyone being identified
and exposed to reprisals from the very people who drove their loved
ones into exile. What has not been altered are the gender, ages, or
countries of origin of the persons who spoke to us. To place the
stories in context, I add historical, political, economic, social,
psychological, and legal commentary.
The only real names that are mentioned in this book are those of
persons in public roles, such as experts, attorneys, and judges
whose names appear on legal documents or news reports. When the
names of my collaborators and colleagues appear, it is with their
permission. There are some children and parents who have been
identified publicly, but I chose not to disclose their names or other
identifying information if it seemed that discretion was best.
In trying to present the stories accurately, I have stayed as true
to the words of the speaker as possible and tried to convey the
styles and manner of speech of the persons narrating the stories. In
passages when I work from my recollection or my students’
recollections of experiences with children or parents, I use
paraphrasing or limited quotes if part of the recollection included
words or phrases that stuck in our memories. Occasionally, I
condense sentences for the sake of brevity. Sometimes, I
resequence words and comments or correct the grammar to make
their statements clearer and easier to comprehend. When a child or
parent used a Spanish proverb, adage, colloquialism, or creative
form that is striking, evocative, metaphorical, or simply engaging, I
present it in Spanish with an English translation.

The families depicted in this book all sought asylum, the legal status
which I use to refer to them. When referring to persons who entered
the country without asking for asylum or without legal documents or
permissions, I use the terms undocumented immigrant and
unauthorized immigrant. They are persons who entered the country
without permission or other legal documents or who entered with
the proper documents but stayed beyond the time the permission
allowed, such as after their visa has expired. Although my focus is
on families, there are times when the term unaccompanied children
appears. They are children who have no lawful immigration status in
the United States and are not yet 18 years of age. They might not
have a parent or legal guardian in the United States or anyone who
can provide care and physical custody.1
When referring to nationalities I use the names of their countries
and nationalities—Salvadoran for those from El Salvador, Guatemalan
for those from Guatemala, Honduran for those from Honduras, and
so on. They may also be described as being from Central America or
from the Northern Triangle countries of Central America. When
including them in the large segment of our population who claim
ancestry and heritage in Latin America, I use the term Latino or
Latina or Hispanic.
The term maras or mara will appear often in the stories told by
families. Maras is short-hand for Mara Salvatrucha, sometimes
known as MS-13, that originated with the Salvadoran gangs in Los
Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s and became an international
criminal organization. Maras has become the referent to any
organized gang or local gangs. Whether a gang is part of MS-13 or
its rival, the 18th Street Gang, or a group of village thugs, the
people of Central America use maras to refer to any gang that
terrorizes them. The Spanish word for gangs, pandillas, is used
sometimes, primarily when the term is used by those I quote. Other
common Spanish terms, some colloquial, also appear, such as hielera
(icebox, freezer), perrera (kennel, dog pound), and migra (a
reference to migration officials of any country). Using them offers a
ring of authenticity to the speech patterns and idioms used by Latin
American migrants.

Note
1. US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee
Resettlement, 2012.
 Introduction

It was the spring of 2014 when a surge of families appeared at the

US–Mexican border, seeking safe haven in the United States, having
run risks that could have led to their deaths. In response, under the
presidential administration of Barack Obama and with the support of
Congress, the United States began locking up thousands of asylum-
seeking mothers and children from Central America in so-called
family residential centers. This was not the first time that the border
had adults, families, and even unaccompanied children coming in
large numbers in search of safety and security. In 2010, for instance,
migrants from the Central American countries of El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras accounted for about 10% of migrants
apprehended at the southern border with Mexico. During the winter
and spring of 2014, family units migrating together for safety began
to appear more frequently. By the end of the decade, the proportion
of Central American migrants apprehended at the border was 81%.
While many were adults traveling alone, there were increasingly
more family units taken into custody at the border.1 In 2019,
Customs and Border Protection reported the highest level of
apprehensions since 2007—about 689,000 migrants from El
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Of the total, 62%, or 430,546
individuals, were traveling as family units, and just under 10%, or
62,748, were unaccompanied minors.2
Unique about 2014 was the arrival of the largest single surge of
families, mothers with minor and tender-age children—showing up
desperate, tearful, hungry, tired. The vast majority came from the
Northern Triangle countries of Central America of El Salvador,
Guatemala, and Honduras; but there were also mothers and children
from Mexico, the Caribbean, other parts of Central and South
America, even eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. It
was unlike anything that the United States had ever seen.
 It was also not the first time that the federal government had put
mothers, fathers, and children in immigration prisons, or “baby jails”
as many called them. But the spring of 2014 ushered in the most
extensive and longest-running era of family detention. Pictures from
this national disgrace showed desperate mothers with children
surrendering, with tears of fear and gratitude, to US border agents.
The children’s faces were blurred, or the cameras were trained on
their feet or hands to protect their identities and innocence as
minors. Adult men weren’t offered the same anonymity, especially
under Donald Trump. Their faces were shown by newspapers and
other media, playing into Trump’s efforts to stoke fear of them as
bad hombres, a term he first used in an October 2016 presidential
debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Trump added more slurs to this
growing glossary of rhetorical devices he slung at immigrants—
Mexicans as “rapists,” Haitian immigrants as “all have AIDS,”
Nigerian immigrants who wouldn’t “go back to their huts.” Other
terms included “chain migration” and “shithole” countries.3
Trump harbored no empathy for children and mothers traveling
alone or poor people fleeing violence. His misleading rhetoric about
the nature of migrants traveling north coarsely claimed too that the
caravans were rife with hardened criminals. Without any evidence,
Trump warned in an immigration speech on November 1, 2018, of
brown hordes coming north:

At this very moment, large well-organized caravans of migrants are marching

towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion. . . . These are
tough people in many cases; a lot of young men, strong men and a lot of men
that maybe we don’t want in our country. . . . This isn’t an innocent group of
people. It’s a large number of people that are tough. They have injured, they
have attacked.4

Disingenuous rhetoric, unsubstantiated statements, and false

alarms were Trump’s tools. The reality was that amid a global
refugee crisis that sent people fleeing their home countries on
virtually every continent, Central America was seeing its own share
of women fleeing violence, extortion, rape, and murder in their
motherlands. They weren’t bad hombres, criminals, murderers, or
rapists. With little to no protection from the government or law
enforcement to handle the surging waves of violence and corruption
in their home countries, Central American women had few options
but to leave behind parents, siblings, and other loved ones to protect
themselves and their children. They left familiar lands, ancestral
homes, and cultures and rituals that filled their spiritual and
emotional needs. Poverty and economic hardship had already
reached into every aspect of their lives. Now the civil instability
brought devastating effects on them, their families, and their
communities. In 2014, tens of thousands of women and children
came seeking safety—asylum—in the United States.5 The number of
women crossing the US border was nearly three times higher than in
2013, only 1 year prior.6 An alarming feature of this refugee crisis
was the number of children fleeing home, with their mothers or
alone. Over 66,000 unaccompanied and separated children from the
Northern Triangle reached the United States in 2014.7 Others sought
safety, refuge, or asylum in neighboring countries, such as Mexico,
Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama—countries that saw the
number of asylum applications from Northern Triangle countries
grow about 13 times over the previous 6 years.8
“Fleeing is an ordeal in its own right, and for most women, the
journey to safety is a journey through hell.” That is how a 2015
report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
described the plight of women migrants from Central America.9 In
this book, I tell about that hell, its origins, and the aftermath in US
immigration systems. The book examines the experience of Central
American children and parents migrating to the United States in
search of asylum. It tells about the detention and sometimes forcible
separations that have become a tableau of our time. I trace the arc
of immigration detention that began under the Obama
administration and continued through the Trump administration and
into the early days of the Biden presidency, including the family
separation policy that took children from the tenderest ages from
their parents at the border. At the heart of this book stand the
stories of families who were forced to leave their countries,
journeyed through treacherous terrain, and ultimately landed in the
hands of an American immigration apparatus that is a part of the
profit-driven prison–industrial complex of the government, private
prison companies, and other groups.10 These are the true stories
told by just a few dozen of the thousands of parents and children
held in the US immigration detention centers during the period
between 2014 and 2021.
“Scarce few of their stories have been told. Most will never be,”
writes NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff in Separated: Inside
an American Tragedy. “There are families who were quickly put back
together, and children who were, as predicted, permanently
orphaned. My one little blue [reporter’s] notebook could never do all
their stories justice.”11
True, no one book can convey the suffering of families and
children in detention and those who were separated. Still, I wanted
to tell the stories of the families I met to add to the scarce few that
have been told. Without a doubt, these stories must be heard and
understood and placed within proper contexts—their countries, the
migration journey itself, and the appalling experience of being
incarcerated just for seeking asylum. Readers, I thought, need to
hear the stories of detained and separated families—mothers and
children who had left their countries; braved their way across rugged
land and international borders; felt cold, heat, hunger, and thirst;
suffered kidnappings and ransoms, violence, rapes, assaults, and
humiliations; and saw death, cadavers, human remains, and other
unimaginable horrors. Readers need to know about the effects of the
detention that President Obama started and that Donald Trump took
to an extreme with his family separation policy, adding untold misery
to hundreds of already traumatized children. I want readers to hear
from the detained and separated mothers and children themselves,
about how their lives, minds, and souls were permanently wounded
and scarred, effects that have been seen few times in American
history. Through the voices of mothers, fathers, girls, and boys we
can know the cruel and callous policies and actions of officials of the
US government and the private prisons that engorge themselves on
government dollars by holding mothers, infants, toddlers, school-age
children, and teenagers as prisoners for simply setting foot in the
United States and asking for asylum.
In 2014 and several years after, the public’s attention was not on
the detention of mothers and children. We can forgive Americans for
not knowing. After all, much of the American media was
concentrated on the misery of hundreds of thousands of people
crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa and the Middle
East into Europe. It was capturing the stories and blistering images
of rickety vessels operated by unscrupulous people with more
human cargo than the vessels could reasonably bear. The huddled
masses were fleeing decades of civil conflict, genocide, famine,
corruption, and repression. The riveting picture of Aylan Kurdi, the
Syrian toddler whose lifeless body washed up on Bodrum Beach in
Turkey, rocked the globe.12 Americans were profoundly moved by
that haunting image, as they should have been.
It seemed that Latin American news sources— Univision and
Telemundo and regional networks—and local news outlets in the
Southwest United States were paying attention to our southern
border. These news sources were showing, almost nightly, the
travels and travails of Central Americans coming to the border with
children, some infants, begging for help. The images were no less
compelling than those from half a world away. Then, two events
drew the US media’s and the American public’s greater attention to
the situation of Central American migrants.
One was pictures and videos of children and mothers during the
summer of 2018 when the family separation policy was at its peak,
images accompanied by the sounds of wailing children and crying
parents. The American public responded and forced an unemphatic
president to stop the atrocity. The other event was the June 24,
2019, photograph of the drowned bodies of Salvadoran migrant
Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his toddler daughter, Valeria, on
the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico. First published in
a Mexican newspaper, the picture by Julia Le Duc, a Mexican
photojournalist, was sent around the world via social media.13 The
picture

shows a migrant and his less than 2-year-old daughter lying face down in the
murky waters on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. The girl’s right arm rests
across the back of her father’s neck. . . . The image encapsulated the grim
reality of the border amid the growing desperation of migrants fleeing poverty
and crime in Central America and elsewhere who are willing to face great
dangers—at times with children—for a shot at a better life in the United
States.14

That image of a child holding on to her father even in death gave

the US public a better understanding of what was happening in their
own backyard.
This book is not an anthology of family stories, although I wanted to
pay tribute to the stories of the many children and parents I met.
But there is, we can agree, no more powerful means to illuminate
than through storytelling. The tradition of telling the stories of
detained, interned, and jailed people who committed no crimes or
who may have been guilty of minor misdemeanors and were
persecuted by their governments is a long one. It is a literary
tradition that has always fascinated me. In this book, I wanted to
cast a light on the atrocities that government systems can commit
on people—citizens or non-citizens—by telling the stories of those
who were the victims of such brutality and inhumanity. Some of the
stories included in this book were told by others, in newspapers,
documentaries, and reports by human rights organizations. Others
were told to me and my research team, first-hand, using the tellers’
own words, glimpsing the insider’s view. The words are of the
children and parents who spoke to us in simple, everyday vernacular
Spanish. Every one of the mothers and fathers who let me into their
lives is a humble but proud person. They came from small towns in
the countryside of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. All knew
poverty and had worked hard to feed, shelter, and protect their
children but could no longer do so. A fraction of those I met had
more than a high school education, but most were semi-literate or
illiterate. Regardless, they are people reverent of the written word,
not just the spoken one. They know of the world of books but have,
for the most part, not been trained to read them, absorb their
knowledge, and expand their worlds. They were pushed into exile by
conditions of violence, threats, poverty, climate change, and no
protection from anyone.
The brave people I met or read about will probably not be the
ones to chronicle the events of their migration and the aftermath.
More than likely, only a few kept diaries or wrote letters or poetry. If
they have confided about their lives in their diaries or letters written
to others, then those writings must be found and brought to
publication for others to understand the trajectories of their lives.
(One exception is the letters collected by Grassroots Leadership,
Inc., in Texas, that appear in Chapter 5.) Whatever they have written
in their own hand, told in their own words, or recorded for or passed
orally to their children and grandchildren, as well as what has been
written by others about them, will form a body of writings
chronicling the first three decades of the 21st century when they
were the targets of the paroxysms of hate that poisoned US policies.
Their children, we pray, will write memoirs of the time they spent on
the road and in detention and of life after detention. Until then their
lives must be recorded as best as we can for the world to grasp the
human agony. I hope that this book adds, however modestly, to the
collection of stories from this period in American history.

With this in mind, one objective of this book is to describe the

conditions that drive desperate families to take flight and endure the
difficulties of coming to the United States. A second objective is to
portray the migration itself, the human costs of a perilous, possibly
deadly journey, and the resilience and triumph of so many people. A
third objective is to expose the experiences of children and parents
at the hands of the immigration system of the United States, where
cruelty, harshness, and punitiveness often stood side by side with
kindness, compassion, and professionalism. I wanted to highlight the
immorality of incarcerating children and mothers, sometimes
separating them as if they were petty criminals and, in the process,
causing untold human damage. It is an unfair, inhumane attack that
continues through the time of the writing of this book. The fourth
objective is to pull together what I had learned into a conceptual
model or explanatory framework to inform our understanding of
Central American migration to the United States from the perspective
of parents and children who made the trek to find asylum. My
intention is to inform. But my deeper motive is to ignite thinking,
conversation, and reflection that might change minds and influence
how immigration enforcement is debated at the federal and state
levels and the way immigrants are treated by the government’s
enforcement systems. Perhaps a reader or group of readers will take
some of the ideas proposed in this book and be the change they
want to see.
In Part I of the book, titled “The State of Affairs,” I tell of my first
encounter with families in detention and my subsequent interactions
with detainees—children and adult women—and with government
employees as well as prison guards. I tell about how private prisons
have been licensed as child care centers and about the ignominious
separation of children in 2018. I try to shed light on how the Office
of Refugee Resettlement held teenage immigrant boys in a
therapeutic residential center away from the prying eyes of the news
media. Part II analyzes the human costs of detention and
separation; hence, it is titled “The Human Costs.” From information
and data that I gathered first-hand and pulled from history books,
scientific journals, legal documents, photographs and videos, news
media reports, and anything I could learn from, I formed
impressions about the stages of the Central American migration
process. These impressions led to the development of a model to
explain and describe Central American migration since 2014 (and
possibly before). Part II reviews the science of stress and trauma,
informed by research on immigration and detention, child psychiatry,
neuroscience, and human development, as well as my personal
accounts from working in this area of the immigration enforcement
system. To add the human dimension to these chapters, I draw on
the many illuminating descriptions, clips, and full-length stories that
cover, to some extent, the range of stages of the migration process.
 This book does not examine immigration as a global
phenomenon. Instead, it focuses on a sliver of the world’s migration:
the crisis of women and children, sometimes fathers, who fled the
Northern Triangle of Central America as family units and applied for
asylum in the United States. I focus on children because, as a
developmental psychologist, I understand the long-term impact of
adversity on their lives. The events that began before 2014 drew my
compassion and abiding interest. These happenings escalated that
year into a national crisis and a national disgrace, a cruel multi-
pronged government attack on the next generation. Although it is
possible to see families as stories in a long procession of stories, it is
not possible to write a book that explores the migration of families
from all countries, continents, cultures, economies, and forms of
government. I don’t attempt to do so in this book, not because the
many migrants seeking asylum from Africa, Asia, and other South
American countries matter less. Nor is it because fleeing persecution
for one’s religion, ethnic group, sexual orientation, or sexual identity
does not have a place in broad, global immigration trends. I stay
within the field that I know and study and leave the description of
other migrants in the capable hands of writers who are far better
informed about them than I am.

Notes
1. Congressional Research Service, 2019.
2. US Customs and Border Protection, 2020.
3. Finnegan & Barabak, 2018; Hirschfeld Davis & Shear, 2019.
4. Yen & Long, 2018.
5. Retrieved from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Population Statistics Database, https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/.
6. Galvan, 2014.
7. US Department of Homeland Security, 2015. Between 2008 and 2015, the US
Customs and Border Protection recorded a 561% rise in unaccompanied and
separated children apprehended at the border.
8. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, n.d.
9. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2015.
10. The others in the prison–industrial complex include suppliers of goods and
services such as construction companies, surveillance and corrections
technology vendors, food service companies, for-profit medical companies,
unions, and lobbyists. For more on the prison–industrial complex, see
Alexander, 2010. For details on immigration detention, see Ebert et al., 2020;
Haberman, 2018; Young, 2021.
11. Soboroff, 2020, p. xix.
12. Vinograd & Omar, 2015; Katz, 2021.
13. Le Duc, 2019.
14. Linthicum, 2019.
 PART I
THE STATE OF AFFAIRS
 1
The Poet, Heroic Mothers, and Cash Cows

The southerly drive from Austin to Karnes City, Texas, takes about 2
hours. The first half-hour or so is on Interstate 35, traveling past car
dealerships, fast food restaurants, and outlet malls. Leaving I-35
around about San Marcos, you take State Route 123 past front
yards, farms, ranches, and “the graveyards of rusted automobiles,”
as Johnny, Arlo, and Willie sang.1 Small towns along the way are
steeped in Texas history. One of them is Geronimo, known for its
annual barbecue and chili cook-off. Then comes Seguin, established
in 1838, once a frontier stop for the then-12-year-old Texas Rangers
patrolling a three-county area. After Seguin, you go past Stockdale,
which describes itself as a “friendly little town” and host to the
annual Watermelon Jubilee since 1937, one of the oldest watermelon
festivals in Texas. Route 123 brings you straight into Karnes City, a
town occupying a more recent seat in Texas history.
Like any drive I have taken on unfamiliar country roads, the first
trip to Karnes City was slow; it took longer than any other time that
I drove there. It all started with a call from a lawyer with the
National Center for Youth Law in Oakland, a non-profit law firm with
a 30-year history of advocating for immigrant children in federal
immigration detention. She was leading a group of legal advocates
from Oakland, California; Austin, Texas; and other parts of the
country to visit a family immigration detention center in Karnes City.
The call had come unexpectedly, without a lot of detail; but it was
urgent. The information I could gather from the conversation was
that the group had filed a request with the US Department of
Homeland Security to look at and assess the conditions of the
immigration detention center in Karnes that held asylum-seeking
mothers and children. The lawyers’ group had been granted
permission. Someone who knew my work with immigrant children
had recommended me as an experienced mental health professional
who had worked for years with immigrant children and parents.
Could I join them in 2 days? Was I in or not?
Truthfully, I did not know what it was I was supposed to do when
I got to the detention center at Karnes. I was full of anxiety about
entering an immigration detention center to see incarcerated families
and children. I had visited a state maximum-security prison once.
But a prison for families with children? Never. This would be my first.
I signed on. I just wasn’t quite clear of what it was I would be
expected to do or contribute, but I knew this was important. It left
me a little nervous but undeterred. I joined the group made up of
human rights and immigration lawyers as the mental health and
child development specialist. The only red tape required to enter the
detention facility was that I furnish a copy of my driver’s license,
social security number, and other contact information to US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the
Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for enforcing
immigration laws at the border and within the interior United States.
ICE has authority to investigate border violations and apprehend,
detain, and remove anyone who enters the United States without
permission.2 Two days later I hit the road at 6:00 in the morning,
just to make sure I arrived by 9:00. Besides being a maiden trip on
new roads and towns, my anticipation made the drive feel longer.
I drove down I-35 and Route 123, fueled by caffeine, anticipation,
and anxiety. Thoughts, ideas, questions, scenarios, and plans sped
across my mind faster than usual. My brain was doing what brains
do in the absence of facts: fill-in the gaps, hypothesize about
uncertainty, concentrate attention, and prepare with conjured
scenarios and questions. The answers that formed to close the holes
vanished as quickly as they appeared. What I could hold on to was
the humanitarian operation, vague as it was, but one that was
nothing less than a call to duty. Only the confidence in my expertise
on the psychological conditions of immigrant kids and parents
calmed me that day, and every visit after. On August 19, 2014, I
didn’t know that this 2-hour drive would be a trip I would take many
more times, much less that it would change the direction of my life.
Still less known to me was that this and subsequent visits, meetings,
interviews, conversations, investigation, readings, teaching and
public speaking, and musings would lead to a book examining the
plight of asylum-seeking parents and children. The book that
emerged would present a framework through which we could
understand the stages of migration and reveal the layers upon layers
of stress and trauma heaped on migrants, a process that began in
their home countries and spanned several thousand miles.
Karnes became the place in which I saw first-hand how the
mental health of children and mothers was incubated, damaged or
exacerbated, and set into unhealthy trajectories. It was at Karnes
County Family Residential Center, and later at the South Texas
Family Residential Center in Dilley, that I would truly understand how
an environment of fear and deprivation worsens the stresses and
traumas of home-country violence and migration. In Baby Jails: The
Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America,
Georgetown University law professor Philip Schrag captures how
different the Dilley detention center was in comparison to Karnes.

[P]rivacy at Dilley was worse than at Karnes. . . . The housing at Dilley

consisted of trailers, each of which had beds for more than one family, as well
as a couch, a television, and a phone, but no bathroom or other private area.
Children from one family were therefore housed in the same quarters as
adults from other families. . . . (This intermingling of adults and unrelated
children would not be allowed in a licensed child care facility). To change
clothing in the living area, adults or children had to pull a curtain around
themselves; to use a bathroom they had to go outside of the living area and
down a hallway.
The families were reportedly awakened by middle-of-the-night bed checks,
and the wait for medical care could “exceed five hours,” after which the staff
nurses “prescribe[d] a mixture of honey and water for a wide variety of
ailments.” When children misbehaved, they were sent with their mothers to
solitary confinement for several hours in a “cold room.”3
Karnes City, with a population of about 3,000, is the seat of Karnes
County and is located on the Eagle Ford Shale, at the time one of
the top oil-producing areas of Texas. Karnes County saw a boom in
the gas and oil industry in 2011, driven by the advancements in
hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking. When I
visited, there were more than 2,300 active wells in Karnes County
that spewed pollutants associated with cancer, brain damage, and
respiratory problems—just about one well for every six county
residents. Hundreds of immigrant mothers and children were being
held in a detention center in the midst of this poisoned environment.
It was worse for those confined at Dilley, according to Schrag.

[They] were also concerned about the water. Fracking in other areas of Texas
produced “millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater” that was trucked
to the town of Dilley and dumped into abandoned wells that were
“repurposed as ‘disposals’ for the toxic mix.” The officers and medical staff
reportedly drank bottled water, and volunteer lawyers were also cautioned to
drink only bottled water, but the mothers and children had to drink tap water.4

Finding a hotel room in Karnes on my first visit and the times after
took planning. Nearly every motel and hotel room within miles was
booked months in advance by the fracking companies to house the
hundreds of young men in search of fast money and adventure.
Outside of every restaurant and bar there were pickup trucks with
large, muddy tires. Inside the bars and restaurants were the strong
young men who drove the pickups—making brisk fortunes and
spending them almost as quickly, much like the thrill-seekers of the
California gold rush of 1849 or the oil wildcatters of the 1870s.
When I arrived and met up with my fellow visitors, I learned that
we would be toured through the facility by ICE and the GEO Group
(GEO) prison officials, allowed to question some staff, and permitted
to interview the detainees, both mothers and their children. As the
only mental health professional in the delegation, my job was to talk
to mothers and children, to hear their stories, and to gauge how
they were coping. The detainees could also tell me how the
government and prison operator were treating them.
 The Karnes County Family Residential Center, as it was called at
the time, is a prison, plain and simple. Calling it a “family residence”
to evoke the image of a quaint lodge didn’t fool anyone that it was
anything but a prison. From the parking lot, you see a large entrance
painted blue with 20-foot walls stretching left, right, and back to
enclose the part of the 29-acre facility that is actual prison space.
You can’t see in. Detainees cannot see out. There are no windows
for those inside to watch people walking their dogs or jogging or
cars speeding by or even see the sun rise or set on the horizon. The
walls confirm that Karnes is a prison for families.
In July 2014, ICE decided to convert what was originally a county
prison into one that would house women and children who had
arrived at the US–Mexican border asking for asylum. Karnes was the
first ICE detention facility built from the ground up, according to
ICE’s online Key Facts.5 The building forms a large rectangle, with
the front section of the interior taking up the largest portion of its
space. It has three wings that run perpendicular to the front section,
each two stories tall and with outdoor spaces in between where
detainees can walk and play. Operating Karnes at the time involved a
series of contracts. ICE contracted with Karnes County government
to run the detention center under an intergovernmental service
agreement. In turn, Karnes County subcontracted the day-to-day
work to GEO, a private prison company that has been in the
corrections field for over 30 years, not all of these with a clean
record.6 Except for fracking there aren’t many jobs in Karnes City
and County. Through GEO, locals find steady employment. Working
for GEO in the detention center was the only good employment
available, and, it seemed, not a lot of training was needed.
As recently as February 2019, the ICE web page boasted that the
Karnes detention center is “a significant milestone in the agency’s
long-term effort to reform the immigration detention system,” a
dubious assertion since reforming the immigration detention system
is not a mission that we commonly associate with ICE. Its family
residential facilities are described as an “effective and humane
alternative to maintain family unity as families await the outcome of
immigration hearings or to return to their home countries.” ICE
asserts that its residents have freedom to move about from 6:00 in
the morning to 10:00 at night and use the outdoor recreation areas
and indoor playrooms. I heard stories of headcounts and demerits if
teenagers were in their mothers’ cells rather than their own in the
adolescent wing. It didn’t feel like freedom to them.
The Karnes cafeteria provides three meals per day and is open
from 6:00 in the morning to 7:00 in the evening, according to ICE.
But the detainees did not like the food. They would instead go to the
commissary where a 10-ounce package of powdered milk sold for $5
—contrast this to $8 for 26 ounces at the local supermarket. At
every visit to the commissary, mothers and children were snapped at
by the grosera (rude) lady who ran it. One mother told me of an
incident in the cafeteria when she was about to place bread in a
toaster for her child. A female prison guard pushed her aside to get
to the toaster for her own bread, saying to the woman and others
waiting their turns, “Muévanse, muertos de hambre,” which
translates roughly as “Move aside you starving wretches.”
The women and children we would meet, mostly from the Central
American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, were
seeking asylum, a perfectly legal act. Every mother I met knew she
had to request asylum.7 They were under no illusion that they could
enter the United States with impunity. If they entered through an
official checkpoint, such as a bridge, road, airport, or seaport, they
could request asylum with ICE officers. If families crossed the
borders with Mexico or Canada or entered the United States by sea
at a location that was not an official checkpoint, they were more
likely to encounter a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer.
Either way they were passed on to ICE when apprehended.8
To be eligible for asylum, individuals must meet the definition of
refugee as described in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
(INA). Section 101(a)(42)(A) of the INA defines refugees as
individuals who are outside of their home country and are unable or
unwilling to return to it because of persecution or a “well-founded
fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality,
membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” An
asylum seeker is a person who may meet the definition of refugee
but is already in the United States or at its border or other port of
entry seeking recognition.
After an asylum seeker arrives in the United States, immigration
authorities take them into custody and begin the process of
establishing the person’s eligibility for asylum. Parents undergo a
credible fear interview (CFI), which is conducted by an asylum
officer who asks formal questions and other questions that might
arise during the interview in response to information given by the
asylum seeker. With the information in hand, the officer determines
if the individual and their family can apply for asylum protection. In
recent years, many of these interviews have been conducted by
telephone or online video conference with an asylum officer at some
distant place, perhaps in an office several states away. The number
of asylum applicants has far outpaced the number of officers
available to conduct CFIs. Sometimes, a Spanish interpreter may
participate in person or by telephone if the officer is not fluent. In
other increasingly common situations, the need for an interpreter
skilled in a rare Indigenous language may be needed, invariably
provided by telephone or video conference. This need may delay the
process until an interpreter is found. Essential to the CFI is that
applicants share any information that can support their asylum
claim. While US immigration laws allow the mothers I met to ask for
asylum, they bore the burden of proving that they had a credible
fear of persecution or torture to qualify for asylum. Communication
and cultural differences sometimes created chasms between
interviewers and migrant women, especially on discussions of rape,
incest, and sexual abuse. This is especially acute in interviews with
male officers. Even when asked directly and assured that it was a
difficult but necessary topic, the women might not confirm their
experiences. This was compounded when there was more than just
the interviewer, such as an interpreter, male or female. Often, both
women and men who have been the victims of sexual assaults and
rapes feel ashamed and do not provide detailed information out of a
sense of humiliation. Omitting critical information about rape and
sexual assaults could result in a negative ruling and necessitate an
appeal if time and legal representation allow. The dynamics are
fraught with power, vulnerability, humiliation, and inequality.
Nearly every Central American asylum applicant mentions the
harms they suffered at home that constitute persecution in the US
legal system. Most often, the mothers, fathers, and even
unaccompanied minors who enter the United States cite serious
physical attacks and criminal extortion or robbery that occurred in
their countries. In the case of adolescents, families will also mention
coercion by gangs that adolescent males become gang members
through cruel, sometimes deadly initiation rites and that adolescent
females become the physical and sexual property of gang members.
In their asylum hearings, parents will mention the inaction,
ineffectiveness, or complicity of police to the complaints they filed
back home. They have claims of persecution carried out by
governmental actors (e.g., police, corrupt officials) and non-
governmental actors (e.g., gangs, abusive partners, rapists) that the
government is unwilling or unable to control. Corroborating evidence
and documents are allowed to be presented, but even without them,
a mother’s testimony, if deemed truthful by the asylum officers, may
be enough to support a showing of credible fear.
If the asylum officer deems the person’s fear as credible, the law
protects the individual from being returned to their home country.
The usual next step is the presentation of the asylum request to an
immigration judge, who will determine if asylum will be granted.
Since 2014, detention has been used to hold individuals rather than
release them into the community while they await a hearing in
immigration court. According to immigration laws, asylees have the
right to remain in the United States indefinitely (or, at least, until
conditions in their home country return to normal). Asylees can work
as soon as their asylum is approved. Some can apply for a work
permit while they’re still in the asylum application process,
depending on timing. Sometimes, a case may take a long time for
reasons that are outside the asylee’s control. After obtaining a grant
of asylum and holding asylee status for a year, the individual can
apply for US legal permanent residence (the so-called green card).
Entering the detention center in Karnes with a group of immigration
and human rights attorneys gave me some comfort. The legal
advocates had been here and places like it before. They spoke the
language of law and knew how to litigate and respond to private
prison guards and government officials. They were far more
perceptive than I was about jail conditions and the slippery answers
of the ICE officers and the prison guards. We were there to see the
conditions of the newly jailed refugees. ICE and prison personnel
were not going to be gracious or forthcoming. They did not like to
have outsiders, especially advocates opposed to detaining families,
entering the domain where they held authority and might over
powerless women and children.
The morning began with a lesson on how to enter a federal
detention facility. From the moment we met them, ICE officers and
GEO employees let us know that they were in charge even though
we had the right to be there under orders of the Department of
Homeland Security. No recording devices. No cell phones. Attorneys
could bring in laptops for notes. The rest of us—behavioral health
professionals, volunteers representing non-profit advocacy groups,
representatives from religious human rights organizations—were
permitted only paper and pens. Lockers in the lobby were there to
store anything else you didn’t need. Briefcases, backpacks, and
other bags were scanned the way they are at airport security points.
Then we walked through metal detectors. To get to our first
meeting, our escorts signaled to guards in a control center near the
entrance to unlock electronically operated doors. Even with new
technology operating the doors, the loud clang of metal doors
striking doorframes transported me back in time to a prison built in
the 19th century.
At our first stop, we sat around a large conference table with ICE
heavies from Washington and GEO. The facility had just opened 4
weeks before, and it would remain open for much longer than
anyone would have thought at the time. The ICE officials did most of
the talking, chattering on and on to slow the progress of our visit.
The immigration and children’s rights attorneys asked smart, incisive
questions, which were often dodged or finessed by our hosts. It was
cordial but clearly tense since neither group trusted the other’s
motives. The detention officers answered in government lingo, citing
sections of obscure rules and invoking impenetrable acronyms so
common in government, the military, and prisons. The attorneys
spoke assertively, knowledgeably, challenging those answers from
ICE that hid the facts the delegation was seeking. It was impressive.
I was simply eager, probably impatient, to get a tour and talk with
children and mothers. Talking to cruel prison guards was distasteful,
and I did not trust much of what I could understand of the ICE and
GEO answers. The ICE and GEO officials were in no hurry; in fact,
the more questions and concerns the attorneys raised, the less time
we would have to visit with detainees.
Before we met with detainees, we were toured through much of
the facility. We saw the visiting area and small offices that attorneys
used to meet with clients in Karnes and the play area for children.
The prison officials showed off the center’s medical office and
infirmary, cafeteria, computer center and library, commissary, and
recreation areas with a soccer field and basketball stanchions.
The most striking aspect of the tour were the cells that families
were held in. Each cell was large enough to house eight persons,
usually three families with young children. ICE calls these cells
“suites,” where families can watch cable television. The dubiously
named “suites” commonly had four bunk beds and one bathroom. In
one cell, I saw a mother sitting in the bottom bunk as her school-
aged son rested on the bed. The entourage had interrupted an
intimate moment, a conversation. The mother’s sad eyes met mine.
I smiled and greeted her in Spanish. She smiled back shyly.
We were witnessing one of the most troublesome elements of
detention: the loss of privacy and family identity. In jail, mothers
cannot parent. They cannot discipline their children, cook their
favorite meals, or take walks as family units. If a mother wishes to
have her children in bed early, her efforts are thwarted by the many
people in the cell with different practices and schedules. Mothers
reading children bedtime stories or gathering for nighttime prayers
must do so, if they can, with other parents and children milling
about. Children see their mothers’ powerlessness in the face of the
authority of prison guards. Parents cannot act as the protectors,
disciplinarians, or decision makers for their children. Those
responsibilities are taken from them by the institution. Seeing their
mothers in such impotent positions can frighten children. They
detect the erosion of the parent’s strength and authority. Other
children seize on parents’ diminished roles to upend the parent–child
relational subtleties. None of these effects are good for children.

Detention centers like Karnes are not the detainees’ first

traumatizing exposure to the immigration system. Before the cells,
bunk beds, showers, regular meals, medical care, commissary, and
library of family residential detention, detainees will have spent time
in hieleras and perreras, terms that pepper any conversation with
immigrants who crossed the border in search of asylum.
The term hielera refers to an icebox or freezer in Spanish, but
colloquially it is a descriptor for the holding cells where asylum
seekers are placed after being apprehended by CBP. The holding
cells are cramped facilities that often hold 30 or more people. Most
often, they are fitted with tile walls and concrete floors and have one
toilet for everyone to use, separated by a pony wall that rises about
4 feet from floor to ceiling. There is typically only one sink for the
more than two dozen occupants. Too often there is no soap or paper
towels, the absence of which causes sickness among the migrants,
individuals who were tired but otherwise healthy at the time they
were arrested at the border.
Women and children, including infants, are held in these
overpopulated cells, usually for 48 hours but sometimes longer. The
most notable characteristic of the hieleras is the intense and
intentional cold, with temperatures hovering in the range of 50º to
60º Fahrenheit, which is how they earn the moniker. Mats are
seldom, if ever, available; and mothers and children must sleep on
the concrete and tile floors. They may be provided with sheets of
Mylar foil, paper-thin and metallic, to stay warm, the same way that
marathon runners do after a race.9 An immigration rights activist
told me of young girls sleeping at the foot of the toilet because the
floor was warmer there. It has been argued that the rooms are kept
cold for the benefit of the Border Patrol officers who must wear
thick, warm uniforms and bullet-proof vests. Migrants know better. It
is punishment for coming to America.
Other characteristics of the hieleras are inhumane and certainly
unnecessary. Overhead fluorescent lights are kept on 24 hours a day,
all week. Tired, unwashed, and hungry after a grueling trek, the
children and mothers are kept cold and deprived of healthy, restful
sleep. The activities by guards and other staff overseeing the hielera
disturb what little sleep mothers and children can get.10 There are
noises outside the cells from other parts of the building.
Announcements are heard and names of migrants called out loudly
at all hours of the night, as they are told to report to someone
somewhere for some unclear purpose. They may be awakened
brusquely by agents to sign release papers. It all seemed so
intentionally retaliatory to the women and children I met.
Perrera is the Spanish term for a kennel or dog pound. The
perreras that are so often mentioned by migrant parents are
typically chain-link fencing of galvanized steel wire that separate
large indoor areas, such as refitted empty buildings that once
housed “big box” stores. Even a sitting US senator, Jeff Merkley of
Oregon, described the enclosures he saw on a visit to a border
detention center as “Cyclone fencing and fence posts that look like
cages. They look like the way you would construct a dog kennel.”11
The fences separate parents from their children or children from
each other by age and gender.12 Pictures of perreras were published
by newspapers and magazines and shown on television and online,
especially during the family separations of 2018. Most often, the
pictures were of groups of children or adults behind cages,
segregated by age and gender, in rows, each cage separated by the
chain-link fence. The detainees can be seen reclining, looking
through the fences, talking with others, asking questions of the
guards. One mother, quoted by Reuters, described watching young
children trying to touch their parents through the metal fences: “The
mothers tried to reach their children, and I saw children pressing up
against the fence of the cage to try to reach out. But officials pulled
the children away and yelled at their mothers.”13 Semantic
differences have been parsed in debates about the term perrera
after pictures of children and adults in them became ubiquitous in
the media. Are they “cages,” “kennels,” or “pens”? Or are they
“chain-link fenced holding areas,” “chain-link partitions,”
“enclosures,” or “walls of chain-link fences”? The people having the
debates were not migrants, had never been held inside one of these
structures, never spent any stretch of time in them. From outside,
the terms could be debated. From inside the chain-link enclosures,
there was no debate: Migrants were like dogs in kennels.
Human Rights First, an independent human rights advocacy and
action group that believes that the United States must be a beacon
for freedom and that America should live up to its ideals, toured
Karnes in December 2015 and wrote that

Children do not want to eat, they are clingier and more aggressive, cry
frequently, and are fearful. Women spoke tearfully of their own anxiety,
feelings of desperation, and confusion over the legal process, and confirmed
the doctors’ concerns that being held in detention was re-traumatizing.14

Our delegation’s meetings and tour ended just before lunch.

Immediately after lunch, we re-entered the facility, and I began my
meetings with detainees. I was assigned a small office, one of the
five or six that opened into the waiting room and play area. I asked
the ICE officer assisting the delegation to bring me mothers with
children ages 7 and above, although I would judge if I needed to
interview a younger child. The large visiting room was clean, brightly
lit, colorfully painted, and furnished with several tables and chairs for
parents and children to sit while they waited for someone in their
family who was meeting with either legal counsel or me. The office
was small; four could fit comfortably, but it would be snug.
Removing this area from the context of the detention center, it could
have been a room in a school or community center anywhere in
America.
A door off the main visiting area with a glass window next to it
led into a small foyer, a waiting room, that could fit about six
mothers and children at a time. Here, mothers and children marked
the time until it was their turn to meet with an attorney or me. A
GEO guard controlled the entry and exit through that door. Only
families could come and go and only when the guard allowed them.
Beyond them, at the other end of the narrow foyer, was a door with
a glass window that led into the prison courtyard and recreation
areas. Mothers waited expectantly for their names to be called.
The officer came back to me with a list of 10 families, mothers
ranging in age from 24 to 47. Eight were Salvadoran, one Honduran,
and one Guatemalan. They each had from one to three children with
them in detention. The women on my list had a total of 13 sons
between the ages of 2 and 17 and 10 daughters ranging in age from
9 to 17. The team of visitors knew that many of the mothers had left
other children behind or had children already living in the United
States. The families we were seeing were not the entirety of their
family units.
Finally, after the long drive and morning meetings, I called out
the first name on the list. Opening the door to the holding area, the
guard repeated it to the people outside. From the door of my
cubicle, I saw movement in the waiting room, a mother rising from a
chair. I could make out the mother moving hastily to get her child up
from the floor. The guard let her into the visiting room with her child
and pointed them in my direction. As I greeted the woman, my eyes
were drawn to the left side of her face. Her eyebrow drooped
noticeably to below the left eye. It didn’t quite reach her cheek and
mouth the way a stroke affects the face, but it was noticeable.
The 34-year-old Honduran seemed relaxed as she entered,
confident that the lawyers and I were there to help and that I was
interested in her psychological health. She told of her husband’s
abandonment when their first child, a girl, was 3. At the time, she
was pregnant with the now 6-year-old son who played in the visiting
area, in sight of his mother. After her son was born, she met a man
who romanced her. She learned he was involved with
narcotraffickers, and shortly after they began their relationship, he
became physically abusive, resulting in incidents that her daughter
twice witnessed. Pregnant with his child, she escaped with her
daughter and son. Then the stalking began, and soon after the man
kidnapped and tortured her, the same man who once promised her a
good life. For 24 hours, he brutalized her with punches and kicks to
her body, pulling her hair, and repeatedly raping her. He poured
water into her mouth until she choked. During the beating, she
miscarried their unborn son. The countless blows to the head with
fists and all kinds of objects, she surmised, are what caused her
facial paralysis. She confirmed that she was still numb from brow to
cheek. When he finally released her, she escaped with the son who
was in detention with her. The daughter stayed in Honduras,
refusing to leave her grandmother.
Upon entering ICE custody, she and her son spent the first 72
hours in a hielera. She complained that the lady who ran the
commissary “is rude and makes us wait in line in the hot sun for a
long time.” Guards conduct headcounts twice a day; these ordeals
last 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon before
dinner. During the slow headcounts, everyone had to remain in their
cells, something that other mothers confirmed. Why 2 hours twice
daily? Prison staff denied, downplayed, and then admitted to the
headcounts. Their rationalizations were as thin as onion skin. Power
was the real reason.
With barely time to check my notes for legibility and accuracy, I
met the next family, a Guatemalan mother with two sons, aged 5
and 2. I scribbled hastily as much as I could of what she said. In
scratched handwriting, my notes read,

Molested by father from 13 to 18 or so. Father came home drunk, they (?)
would go to the mountain to sleep the night and return home in the morning.
Beat her, causing trauma to her head. Quote: “beaten by him with whatever
he had at hand.” Father rejected her when she had boyfriend. 1st child result
of rape by neighborhood boy. Child’s father beat her. Father of 2nd child in
U.S. as is her mother (Cincinnati, undocumented). Father threatened her. “I
will not rest till you & your mother are dead.” She feared for younger sister
still in Guatemala; can’t return for her; would be killed. 2 men told her &
mother they would be killed—They think father put them up to it. Crossing Rio
Grande, older son nearly drowned. Saved by CBP. (2 yo son distressed when
mother crying in interview.)
The third mother I spoke to had been in Karnes for 3 weeks but had
spent 3 days at another facility before being transferred here. The
journey from El Salvador with her 9-year-old daughter had taken 8
days without incident. The 33-year-old woman had left two sons
with her parents. Her cousin had been killed by maras in a home
invasion, and a day or two later, three maras walked past her home
and saw her outside. Their words to her were few but clear: “Mirar.
Oir. Callar.” (“Look. Hear. Keep quiet.”)
After the third family, I was aware of feeling increasingly
uncomfortable from the pressure I was putting on myself to see as
many families as possible in the 2 days that I had at Karnes. Choppy,
scribbly notes from the last interview were evidence enough. Before
calling the next name on the list, I paused. Three minutes, probably,
and some deep breaths. I asked to be let out to go to the men’s
room. The guards called the central control unit to open the door,
providing a number indicating which door it was. The request was
repeated as I went through a second door, hearing it shut loudly
behind me. Splashing cold water on my face helped. Looking in the
mirror I told myself, several times, “Depth. Quality.” Maybe I’d see
fewer families, but I would get a better grasp of each of their lives
and show them the respect they were not accustomed to getting in
a place like this, respect they fully deserved.

“The maras arrived in our town in 2013,” the Salvadoran women,

aged 47, said. She was joined by her daughter, who would turn 18
the next day, and an 8-year-old son. Her 14-year-old son preferred
to wait in the visiting area, playing with toys that were for kids below
his age but were, at the very least, entertaining. After the arrival of
the maras, the reign of terror began with threats, extortions, and
beatings of townspeople. At least one body was hung from a
pedestrian overpass, sending a deadly signal to everyone. Within the
year, her turn came. The elder son was threatened with death if he
did not become a gang member. He refused but didn’t tell his
mother, knowing that it would upset her. It was not long before his
mother found out and decided to escape the country. She paid an
organized group of smugglers $13,500 for safe passage from El
Salvador on July 10. Terror would follow them well beyond that date.
By the second day, the family and a group of about 20 others
were well into Mexico, the Guatemalan border behind them. Their
hopes of safe passage were dashed when the group was beset by a
group of rival smugglers. Their trusted coyote (human smuggler)
was killed. Abruptly, the travelers became hostages.
“We were held in an empty bodega [warehouse] for 12 days,”
until everyone could raise their ransom from families in their
countries or the United States. For nearly 2 weeks, they lived in
squalor, little food, no electricity, no potable water, and no place to
sleep comfortably. Escaping wasn’t an option. By July 28, all
ransoms had been paid, and the group completed the rest of the
journey in 4 days, crossing from northern Tamaulipas, probably
Reynosa, to McAllen, Texas, on August 1. The level of terror dropped
but did not end, even in the hands of US officials. The three children
and mother spent 4 days in a hielera wearing the clothes they had
worn for weeks, unbathed, tired, and hungry. They huddled together
for warmth and shared what little food they were given.
After their transfer to Karnes, they were subjected to threats of
deportation or separation by GEO staff, Karnes County residents who
now had a job and some power. Their cruelest words were reserved
for the eldest child, who they knew was turning 18. “You will go to
an adult detention center away from your mother and brothers,” the
guards would say. “You will be treated like an adult and deported
alone.” Terror that once came from maras and kidnappers was now
coming from the mean-spirited employees of the prison company
who were entrusted with the safety and security of detainees.
Retelling their ordeal took an hour, and all along the girl sat
slumped; there was no excitement in turning 18. Instead, it was all
fear and apprehension. The boy would not leave the room and join
his brother in the play area. “I want to get out of this place,” he said,
tears carving tracks on his dusty cheeks. They were the only words
he spoke during our meeting.
There was a knock at the door. It was firm and unexpected.
Startled, the girl gasped, shot up from her slouch, now sitting
upright, her face pale with fear. She did the best she could to shake
off the dejection and act more alert, though it was clear she was
frightened. The mother looked alarmed, and the little brother
confused. I was irritated. Was it a deliberate attempt to interrupt our
meeting? Guards were known to play mind games with detainees,
attorneys, and other visitors, just to show they were in charge and
to make our jobs harder. Through the window, I could see it was an
ICE officer I had met earlier in the day. I opened the door fully,
holding back the urge to argue. There wasn’t room for another
person in the space. The officer stood at the door. His Spanish was
pretty good.
“I have some good news,” he said, speaking directly to the girl,
using her first name. “You will be able to stay here with your mother.
You will not be transferred to an adult facility.”
His tone was kind. The teenage girl, who feared being separated
from her family on her 18th birthday, let out a muffled scream and
wept with relief and joy. Her mother, still sitting, leaned over and
wrapped her arms around the girl. The teenager reciprocated,
melting into her mother’s arms. Wanting to be a part of the family
hug, the boy locked his short arms as far around his mother and
sister as he could. The officer asked the family if they understood
what he was saying. They understood. He didn’t need to ask further.
So unexpected was that moment that I was left speechless. The
family needed to celebrate this intimate moment without a stranger
present. I gave them the office. Minutes later they emerged. Mother
thanked me. The girl’s face now had color, the muscles that only
minutes before seemed frozen in fear were now relaxed, almost
radiant. I watched them go into the waiting room past other waiting
families and through the second door into the recreation area. I
noticed how bright it was outside. The unforeseen moment left me
wary: Had the announcement been staged as a grand gesture, to
show ICE’s magnanimity and earn my respect, or was it a sincere,
spontaneous moment? There wasn’t much time to process what I
had just witnessed or take in the misery that this family had been
through to get to today.
The next meeting started right away. It was with a teenage boy, the
only one who spoke with me alone without his mother present. At
16, he was tall and slender with a serious and handsome demeanor
and carriage. In the course of the conversation, he became one of
the most memorable of the youth I would meet. His reverence for
the written word, great literature, and poetry was gloriously
displayed by the stanzas and passages he quoted at just the right
moment in our conversation. Later, when I marveled about him with
others in the delegation, he became known to us as The Poet.
Speaking slowly, The Poet told of the dangers that maras had
brought to his small town and his neighborhood. What did the maras
do in his town? I asked. He told of shootings, rapes, dead bodies
found in the morning by someone leaving work at daybreak or a
person walking their dog. Families like his would remain inside with
shutters drawn as groups of heavily tattooed and armed boys—
teenagers like him, many drunk or high from sniffing glue and other
cheap but deadly inhalants—fired their guns into the air or at
buildings. Anyone caught on the street at such a moment would very
likely die. They would certainly be robbed and maybe beaten.
He was a good narrator, adding words that provided depth,
nuance, color, and gravity to the stories of the residents forced into
isolation, their freedom of movement now circumscribed. I remarked
on the fear that everyone must have been living in. Indeed, he said,
the town was terrorized.
“Well, sir, everyone was in fear. Some men in town, I don’t know
who, found it necessary to take actions that the police would not.
They must have felt they had no alternatives.” Vigilante justice was
born in this town, as in other places, of frustration, fear, anger, and
revenge. The bodies of gang members began to appear in the
streets at daybreak, no longer just those of innocent people. The
Poet could not say if the vigilantes were formally organized or were
townsmen in twos and threes, or even solo, who were just fed up
with the thugs and their terror. They were sending signals back to
the maras. The Poet said that his neighbors and others took to
calling the vigilantes La Sombra Negra (The Black Shadow) because
it all happened at night and the people who served out this justice
remained unknown, unseen in the shadows of darkness. Many in
town lauded the unnamed men, whether working alone or in
concert, who formed La Sombra Negra. Others feared an escalation,
a local civil war.
It was a moral dilemma, according to The Poet, between being
killed and killing. He saw both sides and admitted that the way the
gangs had wanted him to join, their ruthless words and actions,
gave him an understanding of the perspective of the vigilantes. I
had many more questions, but The Poet could not answer them; he
just didn’t have the information and would not infer, deduce, or
speculate. He only knew what he had seen and heard and had no
knowledge of the inner workings of La Sombra Negra. Besides, he
reminded me, his family had left it all behind. He would not dwell on
trying to connect the links or fill in the blanks. He was looking
ahead. He and his family knew little else of what was happening.
Perhaps they didn’t want to know. They had set out on their quest to
come to United States, Denver to be more specific, where family
awaited them.
At Karnes, teenagers occupied cells with other teenagers, away
from their mothers and younger children. Adolescents were housed
in the western wing, one of three that comprised the facility. On one
floor were teenage girls and on the other, teenage boys. From a top
bunk, The Poet shared the cell with five other boys. He told me he
spent a great deal of his time in bed reading. Sometimes he would
find a shaded spot in the outdoor recreation area to read and
immerse himself in the words of the authors. Confined to a cell with
a group of teenage boys, I imagined, must have been a challenge
for a young book lover. They could go from friendly ribbing and
teasing to outright ruthlessness—maybe more so given their
backgrounds of hardship, truncated education, and probably homes
with few books or very little modeling of the life of the mind or the
world of written words. They were not the sons of wealthy families
steeped in a tradition of education and erudition, spending academic
years in elite boarding schools or just good public schools. He was
among boys from small towns. I asked him what it was like being a
reader in a cell with other boys.
 Well, you know, Doctor, when I was first put in the cell with them, they made
fun of me. They weren’t really trying to hurt me but just pointed out that I
was libresco [bookish] and they were having fun. It really didn’t bother me; it
was just teasing, and I was used to it. I just kept reading.
But then they asked me about what I was reading. And I told them the
stories and novels that were in the books I borrowed from the library. I even
read stories to the guys. That happened a few times, and one of them said he
wanted to read the stories himself and got a book. I helped him a little bit
with words here and there. Then we got to talking about the stories and what
they meant. The other guys listened to us talking and became interested in
the stories. It was almost like they didn’t want to be left out of the
conversation. After a few weeks, some of them were reading books in their
bunks. Not all the time; mostly when we had to be in our cell at night or for a
headcount.

His love of Spanish novels, short stories, and poems made him
influential with his peers and helped him survive, maybe even thrive,
in Karnes. His ability to quote from memory great Latin American
writers was extraordinary. He seemed to have quotes that were
exquisitely attuned to the moment or topic our conversation had
wandered into. One of those topics was how senseless, backward,
maybe even barbaric it was to imprison children and mothers for
simply crossing politically created boundaries. With a look of
patience and wistful hope that the world would change, that life
would get better, he quoted Romulo Gallegos’s Doña Barbara.

Algún día será verdad. El progreso penetrará en la llanura y la barbarie

retrocederá vencida. Tal vez nosotros no alcanzaremos a verlo; pero sangre
nuestra palpitará en la emoción de quien lo vea. [One day it will be true.
Progress will penetrate the plain and barbarism will retreat defeated. Perhaps
we will not be able to see it; but our blood will throb in the emotion of those
who see it.]15

It was impressive how easily he pulled the quote from thin air to
apply to the moment. I asked him to repeat it several times to make
sure I got it right. It was applicable to the moment but showed
profound knowledge that a time would come when things would be
better, even if he would not be there to witness it. Like most adults
impressed with the literary prowess of such a young person, I asked
if he wanted to become a writer. As he had in several other
instances during our conversation, The Poet replied with an elegant
and pointed quote, this time from Jorge Luis Borges: “Uno llega a
ser grande por lo que lee y no por lo que escribe” (“One becomes
great by what one reads and not by what one writes”).16 Before we
parted, I handed him my business card, saying, “When you are
ready to go to college, call me. I will help you.” He smiled.
Later that night in my hotel bed, it was a long time before I slept.
My mind was in overdrive, replaying the sounds, words, looks, faces,
sights, even the smell of detention. My thoughts were on The Poet
and the families back at Karnes.

In November 2015, little more than a year after my first visit to

Karnes, I was in San Angelo, Texas, to address a group of alumni of
the University of Texas and local leaders. My talk was about the
social problems besetting Hispanic American adolescents caused by
poverty, substandard housing and schools, and low-paying
employment, among other issues. The topics were of little interest to
an audience of wealthy and middle-class White, rural, small-town
Republicans over age 65. They applauded politely. Mostly, they were
pleased that a dean from the University of Texas had bothered to
come to see them.
Back at the hotel after dinner, I met up with two friends who had
come from Austin and Amarillo for the luncheon talk. Like my
audience a few hours earlier, they really weren’t much interested in
the topic of my talk either. They just wanted to hang out, friends
with a free night. They are both typical native Texans, friendly,
gregarious, and funny. Sipping drinks and smoking cigars at the
hotel patio, we bantered, our feet on a low-set rectangular firepit, a
structure of polished concrete with shimmering pebbles through
which little flames warmed the cool night.
Soon a middle-aged man entered the patio and sat at some
distance drinking his beverage. It was a quiet night; he could hear
our lively give-and-take. As I said, my friends are friendly Texans,
and it took no time for the one from Amarillo to greet the newcomer.
 “Well, what brings you to San Angelo?” he said in a pleasant-to-
the-ear Texas drawl, the kind that makes you feel comfortable,
welcomed. The man said he was a regional manager for GEO.
Pointing in no particular direction, he said that GEO operated a
prison just outside of town through a contract with the county or
state. I had seen signs for a prison when I drove around the area
after the luncheon. He confirmed to me that it was the one he had
come to inspect and meet with his staff.
“GEO,” I mused before asking, “Isn’t that the same company that
operates the immigration facility in Karnes with all the children and
mothers?”
The man replied with no apparent pause.
“Cash cow,” he said coolly. As if once was not enough, he
crooned, “Cash cow.”

Notes
1. Johnny Cash, Arlo Guthrie, and Willie Nelson each recorded the song “City of
New Orleans,” written by Steven Goodman, 1972.
2. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2019a.
3. Schrag, 2020, pp. 146–147.
4. Schrag, 2020, p. 147.
5. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2019b.
6. For examples, see Earthjustice, 2022; GEO Group, Inc., 2021; Plevin, 2020.
7. See section 101(a)(42)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. US
Department of Homeland Security, 2022b.
8. Children who arrive at the border unaccompanied or are separated from their
parents or other family are transferred from CBP or ICE to the Office of
Refugee Resettlement, which is part of the Department of Health and Human
Services.
9. Mylar is a flexible and strong polyester film that reflects heat and prevents
heat loss.
10. Alfaro, 2018; Cantor, 2015.
11. Hirschfeld Davis & Shear, 2019, p. 269.
12. Carpenter, 2015.
13. Levinson & Cooke, 2018.
14. Byrne, 2015.
15. Gallegos, 1929/2000, p. 178.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Pineria, 442
Pinna, 449;
shell, 254
Pinnoctopus, 385
Pinnotheres, 62
Pinoceras, 398
Pirena, 417
Pirenella, 416
Piropsis, 424
Pirula—see Pyrula
Pisania, 424
Pisidium, 453;
smell, 195;
ova, 146;
P. pusillum, distribution, 282
Pitys, 327
Placobranchus, 432
Placostylus, 322, 323–325, 359, 442;
radula, 233
Placuna, 448;
P. placenta used for windows, 101
Placunanomia, 448
Placunopsis, 448
Plagioptycha, 347–351, 441
Plagioptychus, 456
Planaxis, 417
Planispira, 311, 312, 319, 441
Planorbis, 27, 247, 439;
monstrosity, 93;
eye, 181;
P. albus, distribution, 282
Platyceras, 76, 412
Platydoris, 434
Platypoda, 411
Platyschisma, 413
Plaxiphora, 403
Plecochilus, 442
Plecotrema, 439
Plectambonites, 505
Plectomya, 459
Plectopylis, 303, 305, 314, 316;
aperture, 63
Plectostylus, 358, 442
Plectotropis, 305, 306, 310, 311, 314–318, 441
Plectrophorus, 298
Plesiastarte, 451
Plesiotriton, 420
Pleurobranchaea, 431;
jaws, 212
Pleurobranchoidea, 431
Pleurobranchus, 245, 428, 431;
warning coloration, 73;
jaws, 212;
radula, 230
Pleurocera, 340, 417
Pleuroceridae, origin, 17
Pleurodonta, 348;
aperture, 63
Pleuroleura, 433
Pleuromya, 458
Pleurophorus, 451
Pleurophyllidia, 433;
breathing organs, 159;
radula, 230
Pleuropyrgus, 357
Pleurotoma, 426, 426;
slit, 263, 265
Pleurotomaria, 266, 373, 376, 407, 407;
prices given for recent, 122;
slit, 156;
radula, 226
Plicatula, 450
Pliny the elder, on use of snails, 118, 120
Plocamopherus, 434
Plochelaea, 425
Plutonia, 298, 440
Pneumoderma, 158, 437, 438
Poecilozonites, 352, 440
Poisonous bite of Conus, 65;
poisonous oysters, 114;
mussels, 117
Polycera, 434;
radula, 230
Polycerella, 434
Polyconites, 456
Polydontes, 346–351, 347, 441
Polygona, 424
Polygyra, 340, 345–353, 441;
aperture, 63
Polygyratia, 246, 263, 357, 442
Polymita, 346–351, 347, 441
Polyplacophora, 9, 401 f.;
radula, 228
Polytremaria, 266, 407
Pomatia, 285, 293, 295, 441
Pomatias, 288, 289, 292 f., 302, 413
Pomatiopsis, 415
Pomaulax, 409
Pompholyx, 250, 341, 439
Ponsonbya, 332
Poromya, 459;
branchiae, 168
Porphyrobaphe, 27, 356, 442
Position of Mollusca in Animal Kingdom, 4
Potamides, 16, 416
Potamomya, 15
Potamopyrgus, 325, 326, 415
Poterioceratidae, 394
Praecardium, 459
Prasina, 449
Prices given for rare shells, 121
Primitive mollusc, form of, 245;
types of, 7
Prisogaster, 409
Pristiloma, 341, 440
Proboscidella, 497, 504
Productidae, 497, 500, 504, 508
Productus, 492, 501, 502, 504;
stratigraphical distribution, 508
Promachoteuthis, 389
Proneomenia, 404;
breathing organs, 154;
nervous system, 203;
radula, 229
Prophysaon, 341, 441;
habits, 44
Propilidium, 405
Proserpina, 21, 355, 410
Proserpinella, 354, 410
Proserpinidae, relationships, 21
Prosobranchiata, 9, 404 f.;
breathing organs, 154
Prosocoelus, 451
Protective coloration, 69 f.;
in snails, 70;
in Nudibranchs, 71 f.;
in other Mollusca, 74
Protegulum, 509
Protobranchiata, 447;
branchiae, 166
Protoma, 417
Protremata, 511
Provocator, 376, 425
Psammobia, 456
Pseudachatina, 328–330, 443
Pseudedmondia, 452
Pseudobalea, 350
Pseudo-deltidium, 498, 511
Pseudodon, 295, 307, 452
Pseudolamellibranchiata, 167, 449
Pseudoliva, 424
Pseudomelania, 417
Pseudomilax, 296, 440
Pseudomurex, 423
Pseudopartula, 323
Pseudosubulina, 440
Ptenoglossa, 224, 411
Pterinaea, 449
Pteroceras, 256, 262, 418
Pteroctopus, 384
Pterocyclus, 266, 267, 300, 316, 414;
tube, 157
Pterodonta, 418
Pteropoda, 7, 434;
breathing organs, 158;
foot, 200;
radula, 230
Pterotrachaea, 421;
foot, 200;
radula, 227
Ptychatractus, 424
Ptychoceras, 399
Ptychodesma, 452
Pugilina, 424
Pulmonata, 10, 22, 151, 185, 438;
origin, 17, 19;
breathing organs, 160;
nervous system, 203
Pulsellum, 444
Punctum, 441
Puncturella, 265, 406
Pupa, 289, 296, 325–357, 442;
P. cinerea, hybrid union, 129
Pupidae, radula, 233
Pupilla, 442
Pupillaea, 406
Pupina, 157, 266, 309, 318–327, 414
Pupinella, 318, 414
Purpura, 423;
operculum, 269;
erosion, 276;
P. coronata, 367;
lapillus, feeding on Mytilus, 60;
on oysters, 111;
protective coloration, 69;
variation, 90;
egg-capsules, 124;
time of breeding, 129;
distribution, 363 n.
Purpuroidea, 423
Pusionella, 426
Pygocardia, 451
Pygope, 497
Pyramidella, 422
Pyramidellidae, 262
Pyrazus, 50, 416
Pyrgina, 330
Pyrgula, 415
Pyrochilus, 441
Pyrolofusus, 423
Pyrula (= Pirula), 419, 420;
spawn, 125;
operculum, 269
Pythina, 453

Quenstedtia, 456
Quoyia, 260, 417

Rachiglossa, 220, 422;

eggs, 124
Rachis, 329–335, 441, 442
Radiolites, 456
Radius, 419
Radsia, 403
Radula, 213 f.;
of Littorina, 20;
of Cyclophorus, 21;
of parasitic Mollusca, 79
Raëta, 454
Ranella, 256, 420
Range of distribution, 362 f.
Rangia, 15, 453
Ranularia, 420
Rapa, 423
Rapana, 423
Raphaulus, 305, 309
Rathouisia, 316, 440
Rats devouring Mollusca, 57
Realia, 316, 327, 414
Recluzia, 411
Rectum, 241
Registoma, 414
Relationship of Mollusca to other groups, 5
Renssoellaria, 512
Reproductive activity of oyster, 112;
system in Mollusca, 123, 134 f.
Requienia, 269, 455, 455
Respiration, 150 f.
Retzia, 508
Revoilia, 331, 414
Reymondia, 332
Rhabdoceras, 398
Rhagada, 311, 324
Rhenea, 325, 440
Rhinobolus, 504
Rhiostoma, 247, 266, 309, 414
Rhipidoglossa, 225, 405
Rhizochilus, 75, 423
Rhodea, 356, 441
Rhodina, 307, 310, 442
Rhynchonella, 466, 470, 471, 472, 474, 483, 487;
distribution, 487;
fossil, 492, 497, 499, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 506, 507, 508, 511
Rhynchonellidae, 487, 501, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508, 511
Rhysota, 67, 310, 314, 316, 319, 440
Rhytida, 319–326, 333, 359, 440;
habits, 54;
radula, 232
Rillya, 442
Rimella, 418
Rimula, 265, 406
Ringicula, 430;
radula, 230
Risella, 413
Rissoa, 415
Rissoina, 415
Robillardia, 77
Rochebrunia, 331, 414
Rock-boring snails, 49
Rolleia, 349
Rossia, 389
Rostellaria, 418
Rudistae, 456
Rumina, 260, 442
Runcina, 431;
protective coloration, 73

Sabatia, 430
Sactoceras, 394
Sagda, 348–351, 441
Sageceras, 398
Salasiella, 353, 440
Salivary glands, 237
Sandford, on strength of Helix, 45
Sandwich islanders, use of shells, 99
Sanguinolaria, 456
Sarepta, 447
Sarmaticus, 409
Satsuma, 314, 316, 441
Saxicava, 447, 457
Saxidomus arata, money made from, 97
Scalaria, 247, 263, 411;
radula, 224
Scaldia, 452
Scalenostoma, 422
Scaliola, 415
Scaphander, 428, 429, 430;
radula, 231;
gizzard, 238
Scaphites, 399, 399
Scaphopoda, 444;
defined, 6;
breathing organs, 160;
nervous system, 205;
radula, 236
Scaphula, 14, 305, 448
Scarabus, 18, 278, 439, 439
Scharff, R., on food of slugs, 31;
on protective coloration in slugs, 70
Schasicheila, 347, 351, 354, 410
Schismope, 266, 407
Schizochiton, 187, 402, 403
Schizodus, 448
Schizoglossa, 325, 440
Schizoplax, 403
Schizostoma, 413
Schloenbacia, 398
Scintilla, 175, 453
Scissurella, 265, 407;
radula, 226
Sclerochiton, 403
Scrobicularia, 15, 164, 453;
siphons, 164
Sculptaria, 333
Scurria, 405
Scutalus, 356, 442
Scutellastra, 405
Scutus, 245, 406, 406
Scyllaea, 433;
jaws, 212;
stomach, 239
Segmentina, 320
Selenites, 339, 341, 440
Selenitidae, radula, 231
Selenochlamys, 296
Self-fertilisation, 42–44
Semele, 453
Semicassis, 420
Semper, K., on habits of Limnaea, 34;
of Helicarion, 45, 67;
on mimicry, 67;
on parasitic Eulima, 79;
on development of Limnaea, 84, 94;
on sexual maturity in snails, 129;
on Onchidium, 187
Sepia, 381, 385–387, 389;
egg-capsules, 127;
glands, 136;
jaws, 214;
radula, 236;
alimentary canal, 238;
ink-sac, 241;
hectocotylus, 389
Sepiadarium, 389
Sepiella, 389
Sepiola, 389;
glands, 136;
radula, 236
Sepioloidea, 389
Sepiophora, 388
Sepioteuthis, 390;
hectocotylus, 139
Septaria, 337, 338, 410
Septibranchiata, 145, 167, 459;
branchiae, 166
Septifer, 274, 449
Sequenzia, 420
Sergius Orata, 104
Serrifusus, 424
Sesara, 305, 440
Sex, differences of, 133
Shell, 244 f.;
internal, 174;
shape of bivalve, 445
Shell-gland, primitive, 132
Shells as money, 96 f.;
as ornament, etc., 98 f.;
various uses of, 98 f.;
prices given for rare, 121;
sinistral, 249
Shores of N. Asia, no littoral fauna, 2
Showers of shells, 47
Sigaretus, 186, 245, 267, 411;
foot, 198
Sight, 180
Silenia, 459;
branchiae, 168
Silia, 425
Siliqua, 274, 457
Siliquaria, 248, 418
Simnia, 419
Simpulopsis, 345, 350, 442
Simpulum, 420
Simroth, on recent forms of Helix, 22;
on food of slugs, 31;
 on crawling of Helix, 45
Singular habitat, 48
Sinistral shells, 249
Sinistralia, 424
Sinusigera, 133
Sipho, 424
Siphonalia, 424
Siphonaria, 18, 431;
classification, 19;
breathing organs, 151, 152
Siphonarioidea, 431
Siphonodentalium, 444
Siphonostomata, 156
Siphonotreta, 493, 496, 504;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Siphons, 173;
in burrowing genera, 165;
branchial, 155
Sistrum, 75, 423;
radula of S. spectrum, 79, 222
Sitala, 301, 304, 310, 314–319, 333, 440
Skärgard, Mollusca of the, 13
Skenea, 415
Skenidium, 505, 508
Slit, in Gasteropoda, 265, 406
Slugs, habits and food of, 30 f.;
bite hand of captor, 33;
in bee-hives, 36;
in greenhouses, 36;
protective coloration, 70;
eaten in England, 120
Smaragdia, 21
Smaragdinella, 430
Smell, sense of, 192
Smith, W. Anderson, quoted, 98, 111, 114, 191
Snails as barometers, 50;
plants fertilised by, 102;
 cultivation for food, 118 f.;
used for cream, 119;
as medicine, 120;
banned by the Church, 121
Solariella, 408;
radula, 225
Solarium, 264, 412, 413;
radula, 224
Solaropsis, 343, 353–357, 442
Solecurtus, 165, 457
Solen, 171, 446, 457;
vision, 190;
habits, 45
Solenaia, 452
Solenomya, 275, 448
Solenotellina, 456
Solomon islanders, use of shells, 98
Somatogyrus, 415
Sophina, 305
Spallanzani, experiments on Helix, 163
Spat, fall of, 113
Spatha, 294, 331, 336, 452
Spekia, 333
Spermatophore, in Cephalopoda, 137;
in Helix, 142
Spermatozoa, forms of, 136
Sphaerium, 453
Sphenia, 456
Sphenodiscus, 398
Sphyradium, 442
Spines, use of, 64
Spiraculum, 266, 414
Spiraxis, 442
Spirialis, 249
Spirifera, 468, 501, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508, 511, 512
Spiriferidae, 501, 505, 508
Spiriferina, stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Spirobranchiata, 464
Spirotropis, 426;
radula, 218, 219
Spirula, 247, 386, 387, 388
Spirulirostra, 380, 386, 388
Spondylium, 500
Spondylus, 257, 446, 450, 450;
ocelli, 191;
genital orifice, 242
Spongiobranchaea, 437
Spongiochiton, 403
Sportella, 453
Starfish eat oysters, 110
Stearns, R. E. C., on tenacity of life, 38
Stegodera, 306
Stenochisma, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Stenogyra, 324, 442;
S. decollata, 279;
food, 34;
smell, 194;
Goodallii, 279;
octona, sudden appearance, 47
Stenogyridae, radula, 234
Stenopus, 440;
habits, 45
Stenothyra, 415
Stenotis, 416
Stenotrema, 340, 441
Stephanoceras, 399
Stepsanoda, 358
Stilifer, 76, 77, 79, 422
Stiliferina, 76, 422
Stiliger, 432
Stilina, 76
Stoastoma, 348–351, 410
Stoloteuthis, 389
Stomach, 239
Stomatella, 408
Stomatia, 408
Stomatodon, 302, 417
Strebelia, 353, 440
Strength of Helix, 45
Strephobasis, 417
Strepsidura, 424
Streptaulus, 414
Streptaxis, 302, 306, 309, 314–331, 343, 357–359, 440;
variation, 87
Streptoneura, 203, 404
Streptosiphon, 424
Streptostele, 329, 338, 440
Streptostyla, 343–355, 353, 440
Stricklandia, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Strigatella, 425
Stringocephalidae, 506, 508
Stringocephalus, 492, 497, 498, 500, 501, 506;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Strobila, 340, 345–353
Strobilops, 442
Strombidae, habits, 64;
penis, 136
Strombina, 423
Strombus, 69, 200, 252, 418;
mimicking Conus, 69;
operculum, 78, 269;
pearls from, 101;
metapodium, 199;
stomach, 239
Strophalosia, 504;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Stropheodonta, 497, 505, 508
Strophia, 343–355, 442;
 S. nana, 278
Strophochilus, 358, 441
Strophomena, 499, 505;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Strophomenidae, 500, 505, 508
Strophostoma, 248, 414
Structure of shell, 252
Struthiolaria, 99, 418;
radula, 216
Styliola, 437
Stylodonta, 339, 441
Stylommatophora, 11, 181, 439;
origin, 19
Subemarginula, 406
Submytilacea, 451
Subularia, 422
Subulina, 332, 352, 442
Subulites, 420
Succinea, 325, 327, 358, 433;
jaw, 211;
S. putris, parasite of, 61
Succineidae, 443;
radula, 234
Sudden appearance of Mollusca, 46
Suessia, stratigraphical distribution, 507
Sulphuric acid, 237
Surcula, 426
Sycotypus, 424
Synaptocochlea, 408
Syndosmya, 453
Syringothyris, 500, 508
Syrnola, 422
Syrnolopis, 332, 333
Systrophia, 356, 357

Tachea, 441
Taenioglossa, 223, 411
Taheitia, 414
Talona, 457
Tanalia, 304, 417
Tancredia, 453
Tanganyicia, 332, 415
Tanganyika, L., fauna of, 12
Tanysiphon, 454
Taonius, 391, 391
Tapes, 454
Taste, 179
Tebennophorus, 143, 340, 440
Tectarius, 413
Tectibranchiata, 10, 429
Tectura, 305, 405
Tectus, 408
Teeth in aperture of the shell, 63
Teinostoma, 247, 408
Teinotis, 407
Telescopium, 252, 416
Tellina, 440, 453, 453
T. balthica, variation, 84
Tellinacea, 453
Telotremata, 511
Tenacity of life, 37
Tenison-Woods, on red blood, 171;
on shell-eyes, 189
Tennent, Sir J. E., on musical sounds produced by Mollusca, 50
Tennentia, 304, 314, 338, 440
Terebellum, 418;
jumping powers, 64
Terebra, 246, 263, 426, 426;
radula, 219
Terebratella, 468, 487;
distribution, 486;
fossil, 506;
stratigraphical distribution, 508
Terebratula, 467, 468, 487;
 size, 484;
distribution, 485, 486;
fossil, 492, 499, 506;
stratigraphical distribution, 506, 507, 508
Terebratulidae, 487;
fossil, 500, 505, 506;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Terebratulina, 466, 479, 487;
larva, 482;
distribution, 486;
fossil, 506;
stratigraphical distribution, 508;
form of shell, 510
Teredina, 457
Teredo, 262, 457, 458;
nervous system, 206;
intestine, 241
Tergipes, 432
Terquemia, 450
Testacella, 22, 52, 440;
habits, etc., 49, 51 f.;
pulmonary orifice, 160;
eyes, 186;
radula, 231;
anus, 241
Testicardines, 466, 487;
muscles, 476;
fossil, 497, 504;
external characters, 497;
internal characters, 499;
attachment of muscles, 501;
stratigraphical distribution, 508
Testis, 135
Tethyidae, 216
Tethys, 432
Tetrabranchiata, 391 f.
Thala, 425
Thalassia, 319
Thalotia, 408
Thapsia, 329
Thaumasia, 349, 442
Thaumastus, 356, 442
Thecacera, 434;
radula, 229
Thecidiidae, 487;
fossil, 501, 506, 508
Thecidium, 475, 479, 480, 483, 487;
fossil, 506, 508
Thecosomata, 435
Thelidomus, 346–351, 350, 441
Theora, 453
Therasia, 441
Thersites (Helicidae), 322, 325
Thersites (Fasciolariidae), 424
Thetis, 454
Thracia, 245, 459
Thread-spinning, 29
Thridachia, 432
Thyca, 76, 79
Thyrophorella, 330, 440
Thysanoteuthis, 390
Tiedemannia, veliger, 132
Tiphobia, 332, 333, 417
Titicaca, L., Mollusca of, 25
Todarodes, 390
Tomichia, 414
Tomigerus, 334, 356, 358, 442
Tomocyclus, 354
Tomostele, 330, 440
Tonicella, 403
Tonicia, 403;
eyes, 188
Torellia, 411
Torinia, 413;
 radula, 224;
operculum, 269
Tornatellina, 278, 319, 323–327, 338, 358, 443
Tornatina, 250, 430
Torquilla, 442
Toucasia, 455
Touch, sense of, 177
Toxoglossa, 218, 426
Trachia, 314
Trachyceras, 397
Trachydermon, 403
Trachyteuthis, 389
Tralia, 439
Transovula, 419
Trematis, 492, 493, 504;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Trematonotus, 407
Tremoctopus, 384;
radula, 236;
hectocotylus, 137
Trevelyana, 434
Trichia, 316
Trichotropis, 275, 411
Tricula, 302
Tridacna, 273, 455
Triforis, 416;
radula, 224
Trigonellites, 397
Trigonia, 15, 254, 269, 448;
jumping powers, 65;
distribution, 370
Trigonochlamys, 296, 440
Trigonostoma, 426
Trimerella, 495, 504, 508, 511
Trimerellidae, 493, 494, 496, 504;
stratigraphical distribution, 507, 508
Trinacria, 448