Questions as a motif
The reason she tells these essays in the form of questions is to form a symbolic motif. What is the effect of the motif? It is simply that the reader should be asking questions. Because people are not curious, they settle for logically incoherent points of view, especially about political topics, because that is easier than asking questions and searching out true opinions. In regards to the immigration policy, there is a clear truth in mind; that immigrants are refugees, not criminals.
The rape fact
Unfortunately, these refugees are given over to coyotes to secure their passage into the country, which means that women knowingly take a risk to be raped, and by the time Luiselli is hearing the court cases as a translator for the court, she cites that in her memory, something like 80% of the women and girls had been raped. She uses this as a punishing reminder that we should not assume that these refugees are not also victims of horrible abuse.
The motif of drug cartel involvement
Luiselli answers a hypothetical question in her book about why an immigrant might want to be in the United States. Is it to steal all our jobs? Is it to bring crime and drugs? No, mostly it is because their own governments have succumbed to corruption with the mafia and drug cartels, so there is no justice being done when cartels murder and torture innocent people, in public, every day, throughout Latin America.
The motif of judgment and fairness
Because many of these scenes take place in a court, there is a consistent reminder about justice, judgment and fairness. By invoking this theme, Luiselli accidentally suggests to her reader that these issues are the issues of political fairness, the very same rules that our equality stands on. Therefore, the effect of the motif is that each reader has to judge for themselves whether they are treating all human life as equally important.
The symbolic border
Although the border is literal political fact, it also symbolizes something to the people who cross it. They cross from the land of chaos into the land of order, because upon their arrival, they are kept in an orderly (albeit animalistic) fashion, where they await due process (sometimes!) which is a process that doesn't protect them in their home countries, because justice is being done according to the rules of drug cartels. The border symbolizes the entrance into America's government, which represents a kind of legal fairness, but the problem is that because American opinion is xenophobic about these issues, they are actually not treated with human decency, which is her occasion for writing this book.
