Detained: A Child's Diary of Survival and Determination

The first account from one of the children detained in the infamous Tornillo migrant camp on the US-Mexico border.

D Esperanza was only thirteen years old when his caregivers, his beloved grandmother and uncle, passed away. Since both of his parents were working and living in the United States, D was left alone in his small town in Honduras. He quickly realized that he simply could not earn enough money to survive, so he made the difficult decision to undertake the journey north accompanied by his cousins, hoping to reunite with his parents in the United States.

Together the children struggled to survive the long and treacherous journey through Central America and Mexico. Along the way, D and his cousins form a deep bond, until all four are brutally separated at the US border. When he is captured and processed at a detention center, neither D nor his family are notified of his release or upcoming transfer. For the next five months, D kept a diary detailing his experiences. These pages tell a heartbreaking story of pain, cruelty, friendship, and resilience, forming a testament to the reality lived at the border. Amidst the inhumanity and senseless violence of US immigration policy, D finds hope in the friendship and brotherhood he forges with his companions and in the support of an intrepid advocate who fights for him, Iván Morales.

Timely, powerful, and unforgettable, Detained brings the border crisis to life.

Author: D. Esperanza,Gerardo Iván Morales
Publisher: Atria/Primero Sueno Press
Published: 08/19/2025
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9781668033838
ISBN10: 1668033836
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration
- Biography & Autobiography | Political

About the Author
D Esperanza was born in Honduras. When he was a baby, his parents immigrated to the United States to give him a better life. At thirteen, he and three cousins began to travel north in search of asylum in the United States. Upon reaching the border in 2018, they encountered the height of the "zero tolerance" policy of the Trump administration, and D was separated from his cousins and placed in a child detention center in Tornillo, Texas. After five months of terrible uncertainty, he was released and reunited with his father for the first time. He is now the proud father of a baby.

Gerardo Iván Morales was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and immigrated to the United States at the age of five in 2000. Iván is a Dreamer, an undocumented immigrant who was granted "temporary protected status" in 2012 under President Obama's Executive Order: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). As a DACA recipient, he is a passionate advocate for human rights and immigration. In the summer of 2018, in response to the family separations carried out at the border by the Trump administration, Iván spent six months inside a US child detention center located at the US Customs and Border Protection-Tornillo Port of Entry, providing aid and support to detained Central American children seeking asylum. On his first day, Friday, July 13, 2018, he met D. Esperanza when he was assigned to Alpha 13 tent, which housed a group of 20 children from different parts of Central America. The two forged a bond of brotherhood that continues to this day, and both committed to sharing D's powerful story and personal diary with the world someday. Currently, Iván is pursuing his master's degree in theology at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.