With immigrant parents getting torn from their families over minor offenses—or no offenses at all—by Donald Trump’s deportation force, Mother Jones profiles expectant mom Yibi and her three young children. Yibi’s husband, Maguiber, has been in ICE detention since February, “becoming one of the more than 41,000 undocumented immigrants swept up” since Trump’s inauguration. Maguiber was his family’s primary breadwinner, working three jobs seven days a week while Yibi was primary caretaker of their oldest child Kevin, who has cerebral palsy. Kevin just had spinal surgery and is in physical therapy, with his doctors saying the next few years for him are critical in determining whether or not he’ll able to walk. Kevin’s well-being should be Yibi’s main focus, but with her husband facing possible deportation and a child on the way, it’s yet another example of how our nation’s immigration policies are harming not just undocumented immigrants, but entire U.S. citizen families as well:
As the oldest child, Kevin understands what happened to his dad better than his two siblings, four-year-old Gabi and three-year-old Christopher, whom they call Gordo because he was chubby as a baby. They slept through their father's early morning arrest, and they thought it was a game when their mom told them he was gone as they got ready for school. But now when Heras closes the door at night, Gordo gets upset and points to his father's keys on the kitchen table, "Papa doesn't have his keys!" he says. "He's not coming," she tells him, locking the door. [...]
Kevin and his siblings' only means of contact with their father is the telephone. Ramos calls for a couple of minutes every day, and the children must behave when they're talking to him—if they cry, the detention officers cut the call. Sometimes when Ramos is on the phone, Heras calls his mother in Guatemala and holds the two phones together so they can talk.
Heras has begun helping other men at the detention center by calling their families in their home countries to keep them apprised of their cases since the detained cannot make international calls. She was calling one Honduran man's father until one day, the detainee abruptly stopped calling. "I don't know what happened to him," she says.
She and her husband haven't spoken about what they will do if he gets deported. "We are thinking in positives.”
According to a 2013 Health Impact Study, “almost three-fourths of undocumented parents with children under the age of 18 reported that their children experienced symptoms of PTSD, including repetitive thoughts about stressful experiences, avoidance of certain activities, and hyper-alert behavior.” Another study found that children who have had one parent who has been deported “may also suffer from poverty, diminished access to food and health care, mental health and behavioral problems and limited educational opportunities.”
According to Yibi, if Maguiber is deported she does not plan to uproot her children and move to Guatemala, because “they are too dependent on the medical care and equipment Kevin receives in the Bay Area.” Nor should they have to leave—this is their country. What the Trump regime is in engaged in is ripping American families apart. We like to say we take care of our own, but that’s not what we’re doing to our kids. If we can spend millions to build bombs, we can spend millions to exercise discretion over who does and doesn’t get deported. But instead, Trump would rather redefine “criminal” to kick out as many folks as possible. “Party of family values” indeed.