By the time they arrived in Homestead, the migrant children had already taken an unwitting tour through American detention facilities with nicknames such as "la hielera" — "the ice box" — and "la perrera" — "the dog kennel." Some had been separated from their parents at the southern border, usually after begging for a goodbye that guards refused to allow. Several of the teenage girls, despondent after being ripped from their families, were asked to feed, change, and care for the now-parentless babies.

They took in their new surroundings at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children — the tall chain-link fences, the massive white tents, the rows of bunk beds — without knowing exactly where they were or how long they'd be there. Weeks or months later, they'd settled into a routine of classes, counselor-accompanied bathroom breaks, and recreational time in the fenced fields outside the facility. They strove to follow rigid rules that limited phone calls to two a week and banned physical contact of any kind — even hugs and handshakes — fearful that breaking them might mean having to stay longer or even being deported to countries they’d fled because of murderous gangs or stifling poverty. Some had heard the American government might decide they were a "bad person."

The children didn't know when they might be released even though many had family members in the United States who wanted to take them. They heard rumors of kids who tried to escape and were shipped off to worse places. They felt dismayed when guards took away the friendship bracelets they'd made to pass the time, or the snacks they'd stowed amid their belongings. They cried themselves to sleep, marked birthdays that passed without anyone singing to them, and tried to follow the advice their parents shared over the phone: Be patient and don't cause trouble.

Some feared they might never leave the facility, which one child described as "almost like being in a prison" where "all that’s missing are the cells." Another saw a boy try to run away and understood the impulse: "We’ve been held here for so long it feels like we are prisoners."

Since the Trump administration quietly reopened the Miami-area shelter almost a year and a half ago, the thousands of kids inside have been seen only in the shadows. Driven behind the gates in buses, they've disappeared into the tents and trailers that make up the facility, which is run by a private company, out of view of Florida child-welfare officials. They've only been seen running around the fields outside, their heads covered by orange caps. Why they came to the United States, what they've experienced in Homestead, and how they feel about it remained unknown — until just recently.

Hundreds of pages of documents filed in a California federal court May 31 bring the children and their stories into sharper focus. Included in a motion seeking to force the government to follow the Flores settlement — a Supreme Court agreement regulating the treatment of detained migrant children — the records offer what is so far the clearest window into life as a child held at the Homestead shelter. In written declarations, 75 kids identified only by their initials detailed their journeys to the United States, their motivations for coming, and the emotions they felt while detained.

Already some of the circumstances they described have changed. Attorneys and social workers took many of the statements last summer and fall, when the facility still held children taken from their parents under the Trump administration’s "zero-tolerance" policy. (The federal government says it stopped splitting families last summer; authorities say the kids currently detained in Homestead arrived in the States alone.) And just this month, the administration stripped away the recess time and educational services many of the interviewed children described fondly.

Still, the statements represent the first chance the public has had to hear from the children themselves. These are their stories.

Illustration by Scott Anderson

"I cried every day because I didn’t want to be there."

Alone in a room filled with bunk beds, M.G. could only wonder what he'd done. The youth counselors who stood watch outside his door wouldn't say. They simply stared as he ate his meals in silence. Occasionally, one of them would talk to him. Otherwise, the Mexican teenager sat in total isolation, barred from going to school or recreational activities with the other kids.

"I cried every day because I didn’t want to be there," he said. "I felt so alone that I was even losing my appetite. I didn't leave the bed. I didn’t have anything to do. At one point, they brought me Monopoly, but I couldn’t play alone."

Eight days passed. Finally, a woman told M.G. he could come out if he behaved. But he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He’d never been reported for misbehavior at the Homestead shelter.

It had been weeks since he arrived, shipped to South Florida after being caught by immigration officials when he crossed into the United States and fell to the ground. A Border Patrol agent had put his foot on M.G. and asked, "Do you want to run?"

He thought being at the Homestead shelter was almost like being in prison. Guards searched the dorm rooms while the kids were gone and took the cookies M.G. had saved from lunch. He spent his 16th birthday crying. Early last July, he asked to go home. That was when he was sent to the roomful of bunks and left there by himself for more than a week. He never found out why — not even when his mom called the detention center to ask.