“She was a little girl with a big name, Josseline Jamileth Hernandez Quinteros.” Thanks to Margaret Regan no one who reads ‘The Death of Josseline’ will ever forget her.
Regan takes the tragic death of this fourteen year old undocumented migrant and weaves it though a series of chapters that deal with a variety of immigration border issues in Arizona. With the astute view point of a journalist, Regan takes several of her previously reported stories in the Tucson Weekly, and fleshes them out with her personal experiences traveling with both the Border Patrol and various activists to document the stories of the migrant, and today’s current headlines. She allows us to see through the eyes of the traveler the reasons they risk their lives in the harsh Sonoran desert environment and brutal heat of the Arizona summer to reach the ‘promised land’ in order to make a better life for themselves.
We hear from all the players in the cast from conservationists, activists, border agents, vigilantes, border land owners and the migrants themselves as Regan provides a cache all of comments. We get her unbiased view of the triple whammy: “habitat fragmentation, funneling of migrants, border enforcement” and see how we as a people have tied each others hands in a desperate fight to secure our borders to the South.
No matter you personal feelings in this ongoing trial by fire one thing stands out above all else. These migrants are human first and foremost and illegal as a secondary thought and do not deserve to die in their flight to freedom. Regan’s portrayal is at once insightful and sympathetic in its telling; one that deserves to read by all humanity.
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