32 Time November 18, 2019
“AmericA, where They didn’T leT me in,”
11-year-old Jose wrote in Spanish next to a picture
of mountains and trees in blue, green and brown.
He also drew a river—the Rio Grande, which sepa-
rates him from Brownsville, Texas, where his fam-
ily hopes to claim asylum. “La tierra prometida,”
he wrote. “The promised land.”
Jose, who is from Honduras, is one of at least
1,450 migrants living in a tent encampment on
the streets of Matamoros, Mexico, as a result of
the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection
Protocols (MPP). Also known as the “Remain in
Mexico” policy, the MPP requires asylum seekers
to stay south of the border while their cases work
their way through the legal system.
Dozens of children in Matamoros drew their
experiences as part of an art project, photos of
which were provided exclusively to TIME by
Belinda Arriaga, an associate professor at the Uni-
versity of San Francisco who specializes in child
trauma and Latino mental health. Arriaga visited
Matamoros from Oct. 19 to 25 as part of a group of
volunteers from Bay Area Border Relief, an organi-
zation that provided aid and psychological care to
migrant children and their families.
The drawings depict family members separated
by the Rio Grande, children inside cages and im-
ages of the U.S. In one, by 9-year-old Genesis, croc-
odiles swim in a river near a vehicle she labeled
PolicíA. Her family, in tears, stand in Mexico,
while her tía, or aunt, cries for them in the U.S.
“Quiero irme de aquí porque no puedo ser feliz y no
puedo dormir,” she wrote. “I want to leave from
here because I can’t be happy and I can’t sleep.”
“Their drawings become their voice,” Arriaga
says. “When they started handing me one by one
their pieces, it was really jolting to see what they
were drawing.”
Customs and Border Protection says it has
enrolled more than 55,000 people in MPP since it
was implemented in January to prevent migrants
from disappearing into the U.S. while their asylum
applications are pending. Critics say the policy also
prevents migrants from getting legal help and vio-
lates the principle of asylum by marooning them in
a violent country.
Seven-year-old Ivone drew a picture of her-
self inside a cage near the river. An unidentified
7-year-old drew a similar picture. “What they’re
living with and what they’re enduring is something
that is going to emotionally impact them for a long
time,” Arriaga says. □
In kids’ drawings, a
look at migrant life
By Jasmine Aguilera
TheView World
Ivone, 7, drew herself in a cage,
right, as did another, unidentified
7-year-old; both live at a tent
encampment in MatamorosA young girl holds up her drawing of the
Matamoros tent encampment, where she lives
under the “Remain in Mexico” policy