In June 2019, Warren Binford, JD, Ed.M., traveled to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas.  She interviewed dozens of children over a few days, and gathered stories so shocking — of hungry, cold and sick children sleeping on concrete floors under Mylar blankets — that they became international news.  After that visit, she started Project Amplify, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening legal protections for children in custody.  But Binford ran into a problem: She says the children's stories were just too harrowing to hold an audience.  "People were so depressed. They would call me and say, 'I can't do it. I bawl my eyes out. It's too much.' 

Her solution: a picture book. Hear My Voice/Escucha Mi Voz, published in both English and Spanish, features excerpts of the testimonies, paired with art by award-winning illustrators who are Latinx. "The children's book allows it to be a little kinder and gentler accounting of the children," she explains. "And by creating this mosaic from different declarations [it] helps to give a sense of who these children are collectively.”  Read article>>  


^{“Excerpted from Hear My Voice: The Testimonies of Children Detained at the Southern Border of the United States Escucha mi voz: Los testimonios de niños detenidos en la frontera sur de los Estados Unidos Foreword by Michael Garcia Bochenek; Compiled by Warren Binford (Workman Publishing). Copyright © 2021."}
Learn more about Professor Binford's work in CU Anschutz Today>>