Creativity helps an asylum seeker, artist, and father build a life in America

From Honduras to the United States, Manuel de Jesus Isasi Hernandez has always created meaning from the materials at hand.

As a 12-year-old in Honduras, he started building and selling furniture to help support his mother. After he fled Honduras to escape violence, art followed him to Mexico, where he lived for two years, painted murals and took tattoo classes.

In 2018, Isasi crossed the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum and landed in immigration detention. There, he created handmade rosaries created out of plastic bags as gifts for fellow migrants.

Now, the 25-year-old is waiting to find out if he will be granted asylum and a permanent home in the United States.

“I would want to live here forever,” said Isasi, speaking in Spanish. “It wouldn’t be the same somewhere else.”

In 2018, Isasi and hundreds of other migrants were bused to the Sheridan Federal Correctional Facility in Yamhill County, Oregon, because of overcrowding at detention centers close to the border.