“‘Why did you come to the United States?’ That’s the first question on the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants.”

This question—and the 40 questions of the questionnaire that Luiselli uses to help interview undocumented migrant children—is the essay’s structuring thesis and the problem Luiselli is trying to figure out for herself as she witnesses the casual cruelty that the immigrant court system inflicts on people. The answer for the children she interviews is most often fleeing violence, but Luiselli ties that to the transnational problem of the drug trade and more traditional concepts of the American immigrant experience.

“The intake questionnaire for undocumented children, on the other hand, reveals a colder, more cynical and brutal reality. It reads as if it were written in high definition, and as you make your way down its forty questions it’s impossible not to feel that the world has become a much more fucked-up place than anyone could have ever imagined.”

The essay explores in detail the difference between people who come to America from a place of privilege, seeking green cards, and those who come out of necessity who are undocumented. Luiselli’s work as a volunteer interviewer reveals how bureaucratic systems dehumanize the people they are nominally designed to protect and serve.

“It is not even the American Dream that they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born.”

One of the key arguments of the essay is that the undocumented children are refugees, not immigrants, and that their migration is an extreme response to an extreme situation. Luiselli will unpack the specifics of the violence these children face from gangs, the drug trade, and their own families.