‘I Really Don’t Care. Do U?’: Migrant children incarceration in Santiago’s Road Home1

Amidst the resurge of the Trumpian reaction in the US presidential elections of 2024, this article explores the complex interplay between state violence, vulnerability and agency through a critical reading of the middle-grade novel Santiago’s Road Home by . Focusing on the experience of migrant children incarcerated in detention facilities during Donald Trump’s first tenure (2017–21), the analysis highlights how the US immigration system masks its systemic violence as care, constructing migrants of all ages either as potential threats or as ultimate victims, which helps to naturalize the use of violence against this community and reinforce their political dispossession. Contrary to this logic, Santiago’s evolving subjectivity and interpersonal relationality in the confines of the detention centre offer a useful insight on how agency can emerge within oppressive environments and in the margins of structural power. Ultimately, I propose to read the novel itself as an act of narrative resistance against the normalization of a world increasingly shaped by carceral logic and the erasure of identity.