Immigration Stories: Crossing the Border

From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Julissa Arce - the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs - had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant.

Product Description: After a tragedy separates her from her mother, Juana García leaves her small town in Mexico to find her father, who left his family two years earlier to find work in America and rise above the oppressive poverty of his country. Out of money and in need of someone to help her across the border, Juana meets Adelina Vasquez, a young woman who left her family in California to follow her lover to Mexico.

Twelve-year-old Manuel leaves his small town in Mexico to join his older brother in Los Angeles. To cross the US border, he must become a “beast rider”—someone who hops on a train. The first time he tries, he is stopped by the Mexican police, who arrest and beat him. When he tries again, he is attacked by a Mexican gang and left for dead. Just when Manuel is ready to turn back, he finds new hope. Villagers clothe and feed him, help him find work, and eventually boost him back onto the train. When he finally arrives in LA and is reunited with his brother, he is elated.

Fifteen-year-old Victor decides to cross the U.S.-Mexican border to earn money for his family. The border patrol is only one of his worries, which also include drug dealers, extreme temperatures, and fellow migrants. This is an eye-opening look at what draws many immigrants to the U.S. and the risks they take.

In 2007, Los Angeles Times reporter Sonia Nazario published Enrique's Journey, a book based on her Pulitzer-Prize winning reports about a teenage boy's harrowing trip north to the U.S. from Honduras to find his mother, who had immigrated to the U.S. eleven years earlier. Sonia has now published a Young Adult version of the compelling and gritty book adapted for readers 12 and older.

Product Description: "A promise that we would be together on my fifteenth birthday…" Instead, Nora is on a desperate journey far away from home. When her father leaves their beloved Mexico in search of work, Nora stays behind. When his letters and money stop coming, Nora decides that she and her mother must look for him in Texas. After a frightening experience crossing the border, the two are all alone in a strange place. Now, Nora must find the strength to survive while aching for small comforts: friends, a new school, and her precious quinceañera.

Product Description: Nineteen-year-old Nayeli works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the U.S. to find work. Recently, it has dawned on her that he isn't the only man who has left town. In fact, there are almost no men in the village — they've all gone north. While watching The Magnificent Seven, Nayeli decides to go north herself and recruit seven men — her own "Siete Magníficos" — to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

Product Description: Nailed into a crate in the back of a truck, fifteen-year-old Maria, her older sister, Julia, their little brother, Oscar, and a boy named Tomas endure a terrifying and torturous journey across the U.S. border and then north to Chicago. There they struggle to find work — cleaning, sewing, washing dishes — always fearful of arrest and deportation back to the cruelties of El Salvador.

Product Description: Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. We meet the girls on the eve of their senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. Just Like Us is a coming-of-age story about girlhood, friendship, and identity — what it means to steal an identity, what it means to have a public identity, what it means to inherit an identity from parents.

15-year old Miguel and his 13-year old sister have been in the care of their Mexican grandmother since their parents illegally immigrated to California. Now it's time for them to join their parents, but Elena has plans of her own. Though the story is fiction, it will bring to real life the plight of illegal immigrants and the risks they take to enter the U.S.

When nine-year-old Betita’s beloved father is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico, Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own. Soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp outside of Los Angeles. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. The voices of her fellow asylum seekers fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be.

Maximiliano Córdoba loves stories, especially the legend Buelo tells him about a mythical gatekeeper who can guide brave travelers on a journey into tomorrow. If Max could see tomorrow, he would know if he'd make Santa Maria's celebrated fútbol team and whether he'd ever meet his mother, who disappeared when he was a baby. He longs to know more about her, but Papá won't talk.

Product Description: "You're always drawing in that notebook of yours," Dino's friend teases. To the small boy, 1950s Havana is alive with color, music, and glamour, and he itches to capture it on paper. When Fidel Castro and the Communist Party take over the Cuban government, Dino's family must move to New York, where the lonely boy pours his heart into making a model of Havana's archways and balconies, buildings and streets. Rosemary Wells composes a tender ode to an immigrant boy who grew up to be a U.S.

Product Description: One night Sophie and her parents are called to a hospital where Pedro, a six-year-old Mexican boy, is recovering from his trip across the border. Pedro comes to live with Sophie, her parents, and Sophie's Aunt Dika, a refugee of the war in Bosnia. Sophie loves Pedro — her Principito, or Little Prince. But after a year, Pedro's surviving family in Mexico makes contact, and Sophie must travel with Pedro to his hometown so that he can make a heartwrenching decision. An Américas Award Honor Book.

Born in the picturesque town of Taxco, Mexico, Julissa Arce was brought to Texas at the age of eight to join her parents, who had already moved north. From then on, Julissa secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant, went on to become a scholarship winner and an honors college graduate, and climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs. Julissa's story provides a deep look into the little-understood world of a new generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today.

Product Description: Zitlally's family is undocumented, and her father has just been arrested for speeding and deported back to Mexico. As her family waits for him to return — they've paid a coyote to guide him back across the border — they receive news that he and the coyote's other charges have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom. Meanwhile, Zitlally and a new friend find a dog in the forest near their trailer park. They name it Star for the star-shaped patch over its eye.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants yearly scramble across the U.S.-Mexican border and into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Many do not make it out alive. This is the human story of those border crossings told with facts, anger, and poetry.

Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling . . . unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother.

Sixteen-year-old Sonia Ocampo was born on the night of the worst storm Tres Montes had ever seen. And when the winds mercifully stopped, an unshakable belief in the girl’s protective powers began. Sonia knows she has no special powers, but how can she disappoint those who look to her for solace? When she gets a chance to travel to the city and work in the home of a wealthy woman, she seizes it. But when news arrives that her beloved brother has disappeared while looking for work, she learns to her sorrow that she can never truly leave the past or her family behind.

Why are young people leaving their country to walk to the United States to seek a new, safe home? Over 100,000 such children have left Central America. This book of poetry helps us to understand why and what it is like to be them.

Product Description: When it happened, Miguel was sent to Juvi. The judge gave him a year in a group home — said he had to write in a journal so some counselor could try to figure out how he thinks. But Miguel didn't bet on meeting Rondell or Mong or on any of what happened after they broke out. He only thought about Mexico and getting to the border to where he could start over. Life usually doesn't work out how you think it will, though. And most of the time, running away is the quickest path right back to what you're running from.