Wildin | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Phoebe Judge: [Speaking to Wildin] And how did your mother cross the border? Viridiana Martinez: ¿Cómo cruzó tu mamá la frontera?
Wildin: Ah, esa pregunta, no la quiero responder, lo siento. Viridiana: [interpreting in first person as Wildin] That's a question that I would rather
not answer. Phoebe: When Wildin Acosta was eleven, his mother traveled from Olancho, Honduras across
the border into the United States. She made her way to Durham, North Carolina to join her husband who'd come five years
earlier to find work as an electrician. Wildin, his older brother and two sisters stayed behind with their grandparents, and
aunts, and uncles. We spoke to him with the help of Viridiana Martinez because he's more comfortable talking
about himself in Spanish. Phoebe: [to Wildin] Would you talk to your mother a lot when she was here and you were
back in Honduras? Would she call, would she send money home to you and, and your family?
Wildin: [through interpreter] Yes, I would talk to her mainly Fridays and Saturdays.
And of course she sent us money. I mean, she, that's why she came here and she felt a responsibility to take care of
us. [theme music begins] Phoebe: [as narrator] Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, sometimes referred to as the Northern triangle, consistently ranked
among the most violent countries. In 2014, Honduras had the highest homicide rate in the world according to the UN.
Wildin Acosta was sixteen years old in 2014 and he says he was being harassed by a gang
whose leader said he was going to kill him. This gang leader wouldn't let up. Somehow got Wildin's cell phone number and began to send threatening text messages.
Wildin: My mother found out about the threat because I told my aunt and my aunt told my
mother and arrangements were made. And, and I just had to pack up and go. Phoebe: Wildin packed a small backpack with one change of clothes and headed North.
Phoebe [to Wildin] How did you get from Honduras through Guatemala, through Mexico?
Where you taking buses? Wildin: Yeah. I walked for like ten hours and then the rest it was buses.
Phoebe: Where you alone? Wildin: No. Uh, through that entire journey. I mean, there were other people.
As well. Phoebe: All moving towards the border? Wildin: Everyone. Phoebe: According to U.S. Customs and border protection data, 68,541 unaccompanied minors
crossed the border in 2014. One of them was Wildin Acosta. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
[theme music continues] Wildin: We crossed the rio, the river, and we just sat there for like three minutes.
And we saw the border patrol vehicle approach. And, they asked us for identification, and we said that, you know, we just gave them
our birth certificates. That's what we had on us. And so he took it, and he wrote something else down on another piece of paper, and then
they took us to a holding facility. Phoebe: Why did you turn yourself in? Wildin: It was the safest thing to do, to turn myself in.
The other option would've been to go through the desert. But I was so young that I didn't want to take that risk.
Phoebe: It's common for unaccompanied minors to surrender at the border the way Wildin
did. Because of a 1997 settlement, the government isn't legally required to release them to
parents or relatives already in the U.S. Even if those relatives are undocumented, while they wait for their deportation hearing.
Phoebe: [to Wildin] Did you say something to a guard, did you say, "I'm trying to get
to North Carolina. My mother is there." Did you say anything to, to a guard? Wildin: When you turn yourself in, there's no talking.
You don't talk to anybody and they don't let you talk. I was held in what's called the hielera.
Viridiana: Some people call them [00:05:00] hierleras because they're really, really cold
holding facilities. He was held there for eight days. And then from there he was taken to another facility where he was for like twenty-two
days. It was at the second holding place where he was, an officer approached him and said, "have
you talked to your mom?" And he said, no. And he allowed him to use the phone and call his mom.
[soft tones accompanied by percussion begin] So that's when he was able to call his mom
and say, "Mom, I'm here. I made it." They were all sleeping on the floor. He says, and like seventy of them when an ice agent walks into the facility and says,
"you all are going to be fine. Nobody's going to be deported. You're just going to go to a shelter after this and then he'll be reunited with your
mothers." Phoebe: [to Wildin] How did you get from Arizona to North Carolina? Wildin: So in those shelters sometimes they arrange with your family so that your family
picks you up. Other times they are able to pay for a flight to, to send you wherever it is that your family
is. [Gentle tones fade out] Viridiana: So in his case they were able to pay for his flight to bring him up here to North Carolina and was his mom.
Phoebe: [to Wildin] So who was your mother there at the airport when you landed?
What was it like when you landed? Viridiana: [summarizing Wildin] Okay. His family was there.
His dad and him crossed each other somewhere when he arrived and they were looking for
him, but he hadn't seen him for like ten years. So he didn't recognize them. Who recognize them was his sister, who had already previously made the journey here and
she was here. And so she recognized him and said, "Wildin!" And, um, and then, uh, his mom saw him and gave him a hug and they, and then his dad
said, "how are you?" [soft electronic tones begin] And he said, "How are you doing"? because, you know, he
hadn't seen him in such a long time, so he felt like he didn't know him. Phoebe: The entire trip from Honduras to Durham had taken three months.
[electronic tones continue] Wildin enrolled at Riverside High School in Durham. Of the more than 1800 students at Riverside,
35% are Latino. And when Wildin had enrolled, his immigration status wasn't part of the conversation.
In 1982, the Supreme Court held that it's unconstitutional to deny an education to any
child present in the United States. Wildin: Yeah, I mean, I felt like I was, you know, living a normal life.
I was going to school, like 7 to 2:30. [Soft electronic tones fade out] I'm in school and then I was working part-time.
I wanted to be able to help my parents pay rent or pay a bill here and there. So from like 3 to 11, I was, I was working at a part time.
And so I, you know, I thought that I was living a normal life. Phoebe: Where were you working?
Wildin: As a chef at a restaurant. Phoebe: And were you also making friends? Did you start to, I don't know, were you going to parties?
Did you have a girlfriend? Were you hanging out? Wildin: Yes, I did have a girlfriend.
And before I started dating her, my friends would invite me to parties. So yeah, I would go to parties.
I wanted to, you know, relieve some stress from going to school and working all week.
Phoebe: So you were just living your life? Wildin: Yeah. Phoebe: On December 17th, 2014, he had his first appearance at Immigration Court in Charlotte.
He didn't have a lawyer. He was told he was being charged as a person not lawfully in the United States.
His address was verified and the judge told him to come back in a few months. Between his first and second court dates, Wildin says he did talk to a lawyer.
And through a miscommunication, or maybe bad advice, believes that he was going to be deported
to Honduras, whether he showed up in court or not. Phoebe: [to Wildin] So you were scared that if you showed up, they would say you're going
back? Wildin: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to go back. And so I said, if the attorney's telling me that I'm going to be deported, then I'm not
going to go. And you know, I'd already been in school here for a year. So I didn't go to court.
I kept going to school. I didn't want to be deported. Phoebe: More than a year passed without incident.
And then on January 28th, 2016, Wildin was in the second semester of his senior year
at Riverside. He says, he planned to wake up at 6:00 a.m. [00:10:00] to help his girlfriend with her
Spanish homework before school. He overslept, got dressed quickly and ran out to his car.
That's when he noticed a group of people he didn't recognize. Wildin: They were not wearing police or ICE clothing.
Um, they were not, their cars did not say police or ICE. You know, they were in civilian clothes and cars.
So I went outside. I put my book bag in the car. And then one agent came to one side, another agent came to the other side.
And then they– another one came up to me and said, "What is your name?" And I said, "Wildin."
And he grabbed a piece of paper out of his pocket and said, "You have an order for deportation."
And that's when I was handcuffed. Phoebe: Where your parent’s home? Wildin: Yeah.
My dad was home. And he saw out though he looked out the window when he saw that.
He always said that whenever I would grab the car and drive to school, and he looked
out the window and saw that they were taking me. Phoebe: What did your father do?
Wildin: He was scared too. [Soft somber tones come in] And you know, with ICE you can't win.
I don't think it really dawned on me that I was being detained until we were driving
off. And then and as we got closer to Raleigh, one of the, I looked at one of the ice agents
and he looked at me and he said, "this is not personal." And I'll never forget those words but that's when I started crying.
Phoebe: Wildin was one of 336 people picked up in the first few months of 2016 as part
of a department of Homeland Security crackdown under President Obama called Operation Border
Guardian. It targeted young people from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, who are living in
three States, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas. Wildin was shuffled around to various facilities in North Carolina for weeks before being transported
to Georgia. Wildin: First I was in Irwin Detention Center and that detention center was really, it was
not high tech at all. I felt like I was taken through all kinds of different ways in order to finally get
there. And then from there I was taken to Stewart Detention Center. Phoebe: Stewart Detention Center is in a rural Georgia town called Lumkin.
It's the biggest immigrant detention facility in the country. And it's privately operated by Core Civic, previously known as the Corrections Corporation
of America. Phoebe: [to Wildin] When you got to Stewart Detention Center, were there other young people
with you? Wildin: Yeah when I first got there, I mean, I was one of the youngest and I think one
of the first of the teenagers that they picked up that finally arrived there. Everyone else that I talked to there, they had all been detained at the border and been
transferred there. Phoebe: Was it like jail? How you were being treated? Did it feel like you were in prison, in jail?
Wildin: Um, it is a jail. And I would say the difference between a jail and immigration detention is that in jail
you know how long you're going to be there and that eventually you're going to get out.
That's not the case in immigration detention. In immigration detention, you can be there indefinitely.
And you can be released here or you can be deported. You don't know. [somber acoustic guitar music continues then fades into ambient sound of car driving off]
Ellen Holmes: The day after Wildin was detained that was, [Ambient sounds of school, quiet
chatter in the background] we found out on a Friday. On Monday I have a homeroom of all Latino students.
Eight out of twenty-three were missing. That's a lot. That's huge. Phoebe: This is Ellen Holmes.
She teaches Spanish at Riverside High School. Phoebe: [to Ellen] So that Monday when eight of twenty-three were missing, were they missing
because they were worried about their own safety? Ellen: Yes. We noticed after Wildin was detained a drop in attendance and definitely an increase in
dropout rate because kids are too afraid to leave their house 'cause they're scared they're
going to get detained on the way to school. Phoebe: [to Ellen] Like he was... Ellen: Exactly like he was.
Phoebe: Ellen Holmes and a fellow teacher mailed packages of homework to him at Stewart
Detention Center so he wouldn't fall so far behind. But the packages came back marked "return to sender." [00:15:00] She got to know Wildin
because he was a member of her afterschool club, Destino Success, that supports the school's
Latino students. The club meets every Tuesday and Ellen says, the kids are asking questions about deportation.
Ellen: I have a list of lawyers that I have on hand that I can hand out, which is not
something you ever thought you would do as a teacher. Phoebe: [to Ellen] I mean, what a wild thing to be handing out lawyer's information with
their homework. Ellen: Yeah. At least they have someone they can come to and get that.
But for me as a teacher, I think the hardest thing to hear is the fear of their families
getting ripped apart. And never seeing a parent or a sibling again. And I, I don't even know.
I can't even process that as an adult, so I don't know how they're doing it as kids.
Phoebe: [to Ellen] Do you ever worry about your job safety if you're really advocating
for these kids? Ellen: Yes. But I'm going to do what I think is best for them and what's best for their safety and
for their life. And in that case, I'm not being political. I'm just being an advocate and I'm fighting for my kids.
And if I lose my job because of that, well then maybe it's one I shouldn't have had anyway.
Phoebe: In March of 2016, Wildin says he was woken up at three o'clock in the morning and
told the data been set for his deportation. In response, students, teachers, and community members held a protest outside of Congressman
G.K. Butterfield's office. They carried signs that said, deport me instead. Butterfield worked through the weekend petitioning the director of ICE Sarah Saldaña to put
a hold on Wildin's deportation and she did. That meant Wildin wasn't going to be put on a plane in the middle of the night, but it
didn't get him out of Stewart Detention Center either. Phoebe: [to Wildin] You said that most of the other people who were being detained with
you had been taken at the border, so they hadn't actually made it into a life here yet.
Would you talk about that? You know, would they ask you questions about life here about what it was like making it,
you know, they, they didn't get two years, they had been stopped sooner than you.
Wildin: So, yeah, I mean, I would get questions like, "hey, so since you've been here already,
you know, what is life like here in the U.S.?" And, and I would say, you know, "you have to work here, you have to work for everything
you have. Everything is bills. You have to work and pay rent and pay bills. And, you know, you don't, if you want to make it here, that's what you have to do.
You can't just go out to nightclubs every night or, you know, do anything like that.
You have to focus and work hard. Phoebe: [to Wildin] Were there other people from Honduras?
Wildin: There were definitely other Hondurans there. And they would say to me, you know, "talk like a Honduran!"
And, you know, and I would just smile because when you get here to the U.S., your tongue
changes. And you know, they just didn't know that. But it was, it was nice to spend time with them.
Phoebe: On June 8th, Wildin was ordered to spend thirty days in solitary confinement
for helping a fellow detainee translate a letter into English. That's where he was when his classmates graduated from Riverside.
His mother was invited to the ceremony as an honored guest. [somber toned melody comes in] By the end of the summer, he'd been in custody
for six months. An attorney named Evelyn Smallwood filed a motion asking the court to reopen Wildin's
case, arguing that he deserves another shot. Not only because he was under 18 when he crossed the border, but also because he was given
bad legal advice. The motion was denied by the judge. And Smallwood appealed. They won the appeal, but ICE still refused to release Wildin from detention.
After intense public pressure, government attorneys offered to release him on a $10,000
bond pending approval from the judge. Phoebe: [to Wildin] How did you finally get word that you could go home?
Wildin: My deportation officer was like, "yeah, you'll be here like two or three more weeks."
And then I called my lawyer and my lawyer said, "yeah, you got a bond." And I hadn't even gone to court yet before the judge but so it was something that had
never happened before. My attorney told me that she had come to an agreement with the ICE attorneys to give me
this $10,000 bond. Phoebe: [to Wildin] So did you see a judge? Wildin: I did have to see the judge.
After I found out from everyone, I had to go see the judge. [00:20:00] And when I was there, the lawyers, the ICE attorneys were there.
And the judge just said to me, "you already know, you know that you've been granted a
bond. And do you need to thank the ICE attorneys here for giving you that." [Somber toned melody fades out] At that moment, I, you know, I knew that it was, that it was
real. All the judge did was sign some paper and that was that. Phoebe: More than $10,000 was raised in a GoFundMe campaign.
And by August 13th, Wildin was back home. Wildin: I went back to school and I was both happy and sad.
I was happy because I was able to go back to my life. But I was sad because I felt like so much time was stolen from me.
But, you know, I think that the thing that still stuck with me was how I was able to be released.
Phoebe: He caught up on the schoolwork he'd missed and graduated in January. He's now working and saving money for college.
He plans to study electrical engineering. Phoebe: [to Wildin] You aren't safe here yet, are you?
Are you still waiting for a decision about your asylum? Wildin: That's right. I'm still waiting on a decision on my asylum case.
Phoebe: [to Wildin] So you could be deported? Wildin: Yes. I could still be denied asylum.
I could still be deported. Phoebe: Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released two memos outlining an aggressive
immigration policy and warned that all undocumented immigrants are subject to deportation at any
time. [soft, hopeful music comes in] According to the memos, the department plans to hire 10,000
new ICE agents, open more detention facilities, and fast track deportations. Wildin's next court date is in August.
[music continues] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer. Nadia Wilson, and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers.
Alice Wilder is our intern. Special thanks to Casey Bishop and Jorge Valencia. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of
Criminal. You can see them that thisiscriminal.com find us on Facebook and we're on Twitter @criminalshow.
Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around Radiotopia
from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation and MailChimp celebrating creativity, chaos,
and teamwork. And thanks to Adserve for providing their ad serving platform to Radiotopia.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. [music fades out] [Radiotopia soundbite] END OF EPISODE.

In 2014, 16-year-old Wildin Acosta left Olancho, Honduras and traveled toward the U.S. border. When he arrived, he turned himself in to border patrol agents. He was one of 68,541 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border into the U.S. that year. We spoke to Wildin Acosta shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, and after he had spent months in a detention center.

Music in the episode: “Skeptic” by Podington Bear “Vanagon” by Podington Bear “Saw a Sine” by Jon Watts “The Telling” by Blue Dot Sessions “Sensitive” by Podington Bear “Piscoid” by Andy G Cohen

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

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Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 62 originally published 3/3/2017 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-62-wildin-3-3-2017

Brief Summary

Wildin Acosta shares his harrowing journey from Honduras to the U.S. and the challenges of immigration detention and asylum.

Key points

Wildin's Journey to the U.S.. At 11, Wildin's mother crossed the border to provide for her family. Wildin stayed behind with relatives.
Threats from a Gang. In 2014, Wildin faced threats from a gang leader, prompting his dangerous journey to the U.S.
Detained by ICE. Wildin was detained by ICE after being picked up in a crackdown targeting young immigrants.
Community Support. After Wildin's detention, students and teachers rallied for his release, showcasing community solidarity.
The Fight for Asylum. Wildin's case highlights the uncertainty of asylum seekers in the U.S. immigration system.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

That's a question that I would rather not answer.

Wildin's reluctance to discuss his mother's journey.

0:06WatchDec 7, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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