A DACA Poet Speaks Out

Marcello Hernandez Castillo

On any given day, the county jail in Marysville, California, holds about 170 immigrant detainees awaiting hearings. Because Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not have an office nearby, the inmates will be shown via Televideo to one of the three judges of San Francisco’s immigration court. After their hearings, 90 percent of those inmates will be put on a green bus and taken to an ICE detention center for deportation. The Marysville jail is just one of the nearly two hundred jails where ICE held contracts last year. It also happens to be just a few blocks away from the home of Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, a DACA recipient and poet who recently moved back to Marysville to be near his mother.

Castillo’s debut poetry collection, , will be published in April. It has been nearly four years since Castillo became a legal resident, after marrying his can be anywhere—is what most attacks the psyche of undocumented people.”