The Far Away Brothers

Claudia Caballero, Executive Director of Centro Hispano de East Tennessee, responds to the book The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of An American Life by Lauren Markham. 

Under mortal threat by the MS-13 gang in rural El Salvador after the civil war, identical twins Ernesto and Raul fled for their lives in 2013. They met the author as students at Oakland International High School where she worked. Dozens of other students also told her their stories of how and why they came to the United States as unaccompanied, undocumented minors. “I thought I knew the immigration story from the inside, because I hear so much at work," Caballero said. "This book took me to a different, more compassionate place.”