Border Hacker: A Tale of Treachery, Trafficking, and Two Friends on the Run

An unlikely friendship, a four-thousand-mile voyage, and an impenetrable frontier--this dramatic odyssey reveals the chaos and cruelty US immigration policies have unleashed beyond our borders.

Axel Kirschner was a lifelong New Yorker, all Queens hustle and bravado. But he was also undocumented. After a minor traffic violation while driving his son to kindergarten, Axel was deported to Guatemala, a country he swore he had not lived in since he was a baby. While fighting his way back through Mexico on a migrant caravan, Axel met Levi Vonk, a young anthropologist and journalist from the US. That chance encounter would change both of their lives forever.

Levi soon discovered that Axel was no ordinary migrant. He was harboring a secret: Axel was a hacker. This secret would launch the two friends on a dangerous adventure far beyond what either of them could have imagined. While Axel's abilities gave him an edge in a system that denied his existence, they would also ensnare him in a tangled underground network of human traffickers, corrupt priests, and anti-government guerillas eager to exploit his talents for their own ends. And along the way, Axel's secret only raised more questions for Levi about his past. How had Axel learned to hack? What did he want? And was Axel really who he said he was?

Border Hacker is at once an adventure saga--the story of a man who would do anything to return to his family, and the friend who would do anything to help him--and a profound parable about the violence of American immigration policy told through a single, extraordinary life.

Author: Levi Vonk
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Published: 04/26/2022
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.00w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781645037057


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 01/31/2022
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2022 pg. 100

About the Author
Levi Vonk is a writer, photographer, and anthropologist who lives with Central American migrants traveling through Mexico. Levi is a doctoral student in the UC Berkeley/UCSF joint program in Medical Anthropology and a former Fulbright Fellow in Mexico. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and on NPR.