The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation machine isn’t new. What is new, however, are some of the cruel, demented, and deceptive tactics the agency has been using to sweep up undocumented immigrants, including making arrests at a New York human trafficking court. Some of these new tactics include using children as “bait” in order to arrest their undocumented immigrant parents, something that happened to Mynor Espinoza, an undocumented immigrant originally from Guatemala. According to his attorney Yazmin Rodriguez, “this new practice of luring parents with the sole purpose of tearing them apart from their children is the most despicable and inhumane practice we have witnessed”:
According to his lawyer, Espinoza first attempted to enter the U.S. illegally in 2009. He was caught at the border and returned to his native country, but later that year successfully managed to get into the U.S. with his wife, Dulce. Espinoza has been working as a mason and living in West Haven, and he and his wife now have three young children who were born in the country and are U.S. citizens.
His 9-year-old son, a fourth child who was not born in the country, is also undocumented and was picked up about a year ago attempting to enter the U.S. unaccompanied. Federal officials turned the boy over to his father after Espinoza promised to bring the child to any scheduled immigration hearings and to cooperate with requests from ICE officials.
Rodriguez said Espinoza was requested to come to ICE offices in Hartford to sign some papers for his son, and was immediately arrested when he did so and transferred to detention in Massachusetts.
According to Mother Jones, “tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors are apprehended at the border” annually, fleeing horrific gang violence in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador for the safety of our border. This decision to have these children make the treacherous journey north alone is not an easy one for families, but faced with the fact that their children may get recruited—or killed—by gangs, they are left with no choice. They are running for their lives. Other children, orphaned or abandoned, make this choice on their own.
In the past, the Obama administration released some of these children who made it to the border to sponsors or family members already in the U.S., especially if a parent or others had previously arrived in order to begin preparing a home. That was the hope of the Espinoza family. Instead, they are fearing their dad, who has no criminal record according to his attorney, will face “imminent danger” if he’s deported back to Guatemala, one of the most dangerous countries in Central America.
ICE’s baiting doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident, either: “According to Rodriquez, there have been at least three other similar cases in Connecticut and more from around the U.S.”
The Hartford Courant:
ICE has come under fire in recent months for arresting undocumented immigrants appearing in state courts for even minor infractions or seeking restraining orders in spousal abuse cases. The New York Times reported this week that judges and defense lawyers in New York have been playing cat-and-mouse games with ICE agents, hoping to protect undocumented immigrants not facing major criminal charges from being arrested by in courthouses.