An Unaccompanied Minor's Online Detective Work Is Giving Hope to Others
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2019
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Coming of age inside America's immigration nightmare: As a 17-year-old, Carlos fled Honduras with hopes of seeking asylum in the United States. He did so on his own, as an unaccompanied minor, without a parent or guardian looking out for him—and that’s how it’s been for most of his life. When Carlos was four, his father was killed and, soon after, his mother left him by a dumpster, abandoning him to a life on the streets. Carlos grew up homeless in a city where a teenage boy is expected to work with gangs or be killed by them. So last fall, he joined the migrant caravan and made the trek north. But once he reached the US border he was forced to wait for months, and with his 18th birthday fast approaching, he grew anxious at the possibility of not being able to ask for asylum as a minor. Carlos is one of more than 56,000 unaccompanied children and teens US Customs and Border Protection encountered along the border with Mexico since October. We bring you his story of survival and how he turned to Facebook to make a family of his own.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesTranscript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:07.0 | On today's show, |
| 0:12.0 | on today's show, turning 18 can be joyous, your coming of age. You can vote for the first time. |
| 0:21.2 | It can mean freedom, right? Today, the story the want to turn 18 because at the border asking for asylum as a minor can open doors |
| 0:36.0 | that are slammed shut for adults. Turning 18 can subject you to tougher more |
| 0:41.8 | unpredictable treatment. |
| 0:43.5 | With so many children fleeing violence alone, |
| 0:46.8 | it can be a race against the clock. |
| 0:48.9 | Coming of age, while coming to America. |
| 0:52.1 | That's today's show. |
| 0:53.5 | Stick around. |
| 0:55.0 | With so much talk about our treatment of |
| 1:02.0 | migrant children at the US-Mexico border, |
| 1:05.0 | we wanted to bring you the story of what it's really like to be an unaccompanied minor coming to this country. |
| 1:11.0 | This tricky multi-chapter journey to get to the border was |
| 1:14.7 | only the beginning for this 17-year-old as he invented ways to survive and |
| 1:18.9 | waited and waited and waited and waited. For this story I'm here with Mother Jones immigration reporter |
| 1:25.6 | Fernando Echavari. Hey Jamila I'm gonna play you something to start okay? |
| 1:30.2 | My name is Jenny Vie. I'm a migrant justice organizer. I work at Karesen which stands for the Central American Resource Center here in LA. |
| 1:39.0 | And my... sorry, hello. |
| 1:47.0 | So, hello. What oh? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mother Jones, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Mother Jones and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.