What a Pediatrician Can Do for a Child Seeking Asylum—and What She Can’t

_{Asylum Seekers in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco Migrant Refuge Center, photo by Daniel Arauz CC BY 2.0}

On a cool spring afternoon, in a clinic that serves refugee and immigrant families, I sit across from a teen-age girl. She is otherwise known as an unaccompanied alien child, or U.A.C. She left her home in Central America, crossed the southern border, and was detained for a week—in Texas, she thinks—in a facility where breakfast was a cold bean burrito, lunch was a cup of microwavable noodle soup, and dinner was a cold bean burrito. She says that the detention facility was fine—no, nothing bad happened. Yes, it was only girls. Her main complaint is that she was not allowed to brush her teeth.

Click here to read more of this story in The New Yorker magazine by Rachel Pearson.