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Part 3, Chapter 7: The Machine
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear America, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Citizenship, Belonging, and Identity
Family, Love, and Intimacy
Immigration Politics and Policy
Journalism, Storytelling, and the Power of Truth
Summary
Analysis
In summer 2014, Central American refugees—most of them children—began crossing the border in droves. The immigrants rights activist Cristina Jiménez invited Vargas to McAllen, Texas, where she was hosting a vigil to welcome these children to the U.S. While the right-wing media blamed DACA for the “crisis,” President Obama refused to give the children refugee status.
The media’s cruel, paranoid response to child refugees shows how inhumane and destructive immigration politics has become in the U.S. Meanwhile, Obama refuses to treat immigrant children humanely, seemingly because it would harm his political image among immigration opponents. Thus, U.S. immigration policy turns into a game of needless cruelty and violence against innocent children.
Themes
Vargas ultimately decided to go to McAllen, but when he arrived, he was surprised to see Border Patrol agents and immigration officers everywhere. A lawyer friend and an undocumented youth activist both asked Vargas how he was going to get through the immigration checkpoints all around the region. When Cristina Jiménez realized that Vargas didn’t have protection through DACA, she panicked and started helping him plan how to leave. Ryan Eller and Alida Garcia flew in to join him, and he wrote and published an essay about his experience. Eventually, everyone agreed that flying was Vargas’s best chance to safely leave McAllen. But the Border Patrol was checking visas at the airport, and Vargas got caught.
This time, Vargas’s decision to risk his safety for the greater good backfired. The border was so militarized that it exceeded even his expectations as an immigration activist. This shows that the reality of immigration enforcement is totally decoupled from the way most Americans think about it. Indeed, most public discussions treat immigration as an abstraction or an idea, while ignoring the concrete realities on the ground in places like McAllen. While Vargas’s friends and colleagues didn’t manage to save him from the border patrol, they nevertheless helped him confront his fate with dignity and support. So did writing, which let him again channel his personal suffering into a public service. This shows that both writing and relationships are key tools that allow Vargas to deal with the stress of undocumented life.
Themes
