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SOUTH JORDAN — After his church mission to Guatemala, Jace Norton didn't expect to get much use from the Q'eqchi' he learned working with the Indigenous population in the Central American country.
"I never ever imagined in my wildest dreams that I would use it," said the South Jordan man. He served his two-year mission with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints largely in the Alta Verapaz region of the country, where the Q'eqchi' Mayan people live.
When a recruiter reached out to him in 2020, though, seeking his language skills to help with interpreting, an unexpected opportunity opened up that Norton turned into a venture that has become his livelihood. Since 2021, he's operated Maya Bridge Language Services, which provides interpretation services for the growing number of Indigenous teens and youth from Guatemala who travel to the United States and get caught up in the U.S. immigration system.
He and his team of translators — many of them also returned missionaries — are among the limited pool of people who speak Q'eqchi', he said, which created an opportunity available to few others. "Really nobody learns (Q'eqchi') fluently unless they're missionaries," he said.
Just 1 million or so people speak the Q'eqchi' language, most in Guatemala and Belize, according to Next Step Equal Education, a nonprofit Texas organization that promotes education in the Indigenous villages of Guatemala. Significantly, though, an outsized share of unaccompanied minors entering the United States come from Guatemala, according to Norton and federal figures.
"Maya Bridge was created with a singular purpose — to increase access to Mayan language interpretation services. With the dramatic surge in migration from Central America to the United States, the need for interpretation in Mayan languages has become a national crisis," reads the company's website.
Norton and his team of translators most frequently help youth aged 12 to 17, offering interpretation services via phone or video calls for federal officials working with them. As such, while demand for his firm's services is on the rise, the work offers what can be a heartbreaking glimpse into the desperation that drives the young Indigenous people of Guatemala to the United States.
"They face discrimination in their home country because they come from an Indigenous background," Norton said. The Indigenous typically work as subsistence farmers, circumstances that limit the opportunities for the young, particularly if they don't speak Spanish, and breed a measure of restlessness.
Looking to the United States, though, Norton said they see opportunity, spurring them to uproot themselves from their families, even if it means leaving their villages for the first time in their lives and leaping into the unknown.
"They see kind of this hope," he said.
With unaccompanied minors, U.S. officials exert more effort than if they were adults to learn about their circumstances and place them with family members or others they may know in the United States, as spelled out in law. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, manages the program that aids them, the Unaccompanied Children Program.
"Most children are placed into (Office of Refugee Resettlement) care because they were apprehended by immigration authorities while trying to cross the border; others are referred after coming to the attention of immigration authorities at some point after crossing the border," reads a U.S. government fact sheet on the program, released April 1.
Over the years, the Unaccompanied Children Program has aided 700,000 kids and teens, with the numbers steadily increasing, according to the fact sheet. In fiscal year 2012, which ended Sept. 30, 2012, the program helped 13,625 children, and that number increased to 118,938 for fiscal year 2023. Guatemala accounted for the largest single share of youth assisted by the program in fiscal year 2023, 42% of them, followed by Honduras, 28%, and El Salvador, 9%.
Norton's firm aids with interpretation in other relatively uncommon languages as well as more common ones. Haitian Creole speakers account for the second-largest pool of unaccompanied minors his firm works with, Norton said. His company's website, though, emphasizes translation offerings focused on the varied Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala, including Q'eqchi', and Norton, with his missionary experience in the nation, is very mindful of the factors that push some from the country.
"It's just that there's no opportunity," he said.
