Thursday, January 28, 2016, was a cold morning in Durham, North Carolina, and Wildin David Guillén Acosta was warming up his car as he got ready for school. He went inside for his backpack, and when he returned a group of plainclothes Immigration Custom Enforcement agents appeared at his driveway. His father watched from the window as they threw the 19-year-old to the ground and arrested him.
Acosta was one of five students detained by ICE that week, and one of the hundreds detained that month. His absence didn’t go unremarked. When word about Acosta’s arrest reached his high school, the level of outrage reached feverishheights. Pacific Standard spoke with Acosta, his family, classmates, teachers, and Durham politicians in order to gain an understanding of how his detainment, as the detainment of thousands of other teenagers, can tear apart communities across the nation.
Acosta arrived in the United States in 2014 when he was 17; 17 was also the number of days it took him to travel, by car and foot, from Olancho, Honduras to Durham. One by one, the Acostas fled gang violence in their native country; Wildin was the last to leave. When he finally arrived in Durham, it had been so long his parents didn’t even recognize him at first.
[For more of this story, written by Julie Morse, go to https://psmag.com/how-one-immi...a84f3b70d#.pwfeauo76]
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