Author (Valeria Luiselli)

The author is a writer living in New York with her husband and daughter. She is motivated into taking action during the summer of 2014, when she first hears of the growing numbers of Central American immigrant children crossing the U.S.- Mexico border alone. Traveling with her family toward the southern border of the United States as a legal resident, she pieces together the developing story of the “immigration crisis.” As she does, the author and her family become targets for racial profiling and face scrutiny and suspicion from Border Patrol agents.

A conversation with her lawyer about her delayed green card prompts the author to take a job translating for immigration cases in the New York immigration court. She jumps right into work on the first day at The Door with minimal training due to the high volume of children that showed up...