by Briana Nichols and Lauren Heidbrink

The Washington Post recently published “What’s best for Pascual? His Guatemalan parents sent him to the U.S. for a better life. Then they wanted their 9-year-old back.” The article traces the journey of a Pascual, an indigenous Q’anjob’al child, as he is wrenched away from his American foster parents and returned to Guatemala. Throughout, Pascual’s parents in Guatemala are cast as neglectful and ignorant, evidenced by his lack of formal education, poor dental hygiene, and inadequate diet. The story reflects an increasingly clear and consequential narrative that misunderstands the reasons for child migration and simultaneously pathologizes parents as neglectful, violent, poor, or otherwise deficient for presumably “sending” their children to the United States.

In focusing on his family’s poverty, rather than the structures that create it, the article fails to consider the complex conditions and deep histories spurring migration of Indigenous children from Central America. Take, for example, education in Guatemala. While officially free and compulsory, inefficacy and corruption plague the public-school system. For rural indigenous youth, such as Pascual, schools are often geographically inaccessible, lacking in even the most basic supplies, and staffed by teachers who often do not speak the indigenous language of their pupils. Families frequently find themselves being asked to pay for desks, books, and even teacher fees when the government fails to pay their salaries. In interviews, young people describe their schooling experiences as “traumatic” and “demeaning”. Only 71.8% of children in Guatemala reach sixth grade. In the predominantly indigenous highlands, where Pascual is from, this number drops to 44%. This is not a result of parental neglect or ignorance, as the article suggests, but an outcome of the Guatemalan government spending a meager 2.8 percent of its GDP on public education, far less than the regional average. 

The article likewise reflects a common misconception among policy makers and the public of what child migration actually means to families. Youth and their families describe migration as “an act of love”, “an investment in their future”, and in the “possibility of a dignified life.” While it may shock American sensibilities for children to cross multiple international borders, Guatemalan families rely on migration as a rational resource to access opportunities often restricted to the more “privileged” in the Global North. Pascual’s parents never intended to relinquish their parental rights; he was entrusted to the care of his extended family. 

These misconceptions matter. The U.S. child welfare system has a troubling history of deeming income-poor black and brown parents as “unfit,” and in the process, inflicting harm on the very children they aim to protect. Parents of migrant children are no exception. For months, child welfare authorities did not permit Pascual to speak with his family in Guatemala, creating a chasm that, in turn, was used as evidence of parental neglect. Pascual’s parents only found out about the termination of their parental rights through the efforts of a non-profit organization. In our interviews, parents lament a lack meaningful access to child welfare determinations and legal proceedings that determine their fate. 

We are not the only ones reaching these conclusions. Decades of legal research underscores how state courts often make rulings informed by a child or parent’s immigration status or through anti-immigrant biases. Pascual’s experiences reflect pervasive realities we evidence in our research--institutions and legal systems struggle to understand the realities of transnational families. This pushes migrant children disproportionately into the state child welfare system, a trend exacerbated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy which has resulted in scores of children still waiting to be reunited with their parents. 

With an influx of unaccompanied children currently entering the U.S., the number of migrant youth ensnared in the child welfare and custody proceedings is likely to rise. There is an urgent need for child welfare authorities and legal institutions to move away from pathologizing parents of migrant children. Denying young people the meaningful ability to advocate for themselves and their futures, diminishing their cultures and their language and legally separating migrant children from their families is not in migrant children’s best interests. 

What is best for Pascual? A dignified life, wherever that life may be. 

About the authors
Briana Nichols is a doctoral candidate in education and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania who studies Guatemalan youth living in contexts of extreme migration. Lauren Heidbrink is associate professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach and author of Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation (Stanford University Press 2020).