Border hacker A tale of treachery, trafficking, and two friends on the run

Anthropologist Vonk and undocumented Guatemalan immigrant Kirschner deliver a harrowing account of exploitation along the migrant route from Central America to the U.S. In 2015, Vonk joined a caravan organized by associates of the humanitarian activist Fr. Alejandro Solalinde. The plan was to travel 300 miles from the Guatemala border to Ixtepec, Oaxaca, through some of the most heavily patrolled areas in Mexico, to call attention to a secret "quasi-army" that was "catching and deporting as many Central American migrants as possible... at the behest of the United States." During the journey, Vonk met Kirschner, who grew up on Long Island and was deported to Guatemala after he got in a traffic accident and the other driver reported him to the police. The two form a fast friendship, though inconsistencies in Kirschner's story begin to make Vonk suspicious. After the caravan ends, Kirschner reveals to Vonk that he is a computer hacker; he also alleges that activists and politicians associated with Father Solalinde conspired to keep him from reaching the U.S. in order to exploit his hacking skills. Combining Vonk's in-depth reportage on U.S. border policy, predatory shelter operators, and the links between cartels, kidnappers, and the police with Kirschner's first-person testimony, the two unspool a riveting and disturbing story. Readers will be aghast. Agent: Amelia Atlas, ICM Partners. (Apr.)

An inspiring, timely border story about "how it is possible for two people who seemingly could not be more different on paper--a young, southern, white academic and an undocumented, Afro-Latino, New York hustler--to still share something." In 2015, Vonk, a young American anthropologist, embedded with a migration caravan in Mexico. Along the way, he developed a friendship with Kirschner, an undocumented American Guatemalan desperate to return to New York City after being deported for a minor traffic violation. This particular migration, called the Viacrucis Migrante, was ostensibly sponsored by Father Alejandro Solalinde, a powerful figure whose political ties with the Mexican authorities were questionable--though his religious protection was essential to the caravan's success. Vonk was swiftly initiated into the caravan lifestyle, fraught with hardships, including lack of food and water, bare accommodations, drugs, gang activity, and perhaps even the trafficking of children and youth. During the journey, he met Kirschner, "a down-and-out deportee with little formal education and no resources," who was born in Guatemala but spent most of his life in New York City. Vonk incorporates Kirschner's perspective in italics as a running commentary on the primary narrative, allowing readers to sift through the extraordinary, often sordid details of Kirschner's life as a quasi-criminal hacker and gauge for themselves whether he--or Vonk--is telling the whole truth. "The more I tried to decipher it all, the more it eluded me," writes Vonk. "Every time I dug deeper, every time I grasped at some kind of essence or innermost kernel, it all melted into air." The Viacrucis Migrante was essentially shut down by the Southern Border Program, which allowed gangs to proliferate and left scant resources for migrants like Kirschner to continue to make dangerous attempts at crossing the border--to their absolute peril. Everyone has their hands dirty in this text, a significant addition to the literature on an ongoing humanitarian crisis. An engaging work of on-the-ground journalism that exposes root causes of a chronic problem. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.