Gladys, threatened with dismemberment and death in Guatemala, grabbed her two young children and fled north. She hoped for safety in the U.S., but said she was instead accosted with cruel insults from immigration agents. “When I first spoke with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE officers,” Gladys said, “they told us, ‘why did you come from your country?’, ‘don’t you know that we hate you people?’, ‘we don’t want you in our country’”.
Then, before ushering her to court “where they condemned me as a criminal,” they took her children away. “There was no opportunity for me to say goodbye to my children. I spoke with my children once on June 19th. I think they are in Texas.”
Further examination of nearly 1,000 pages of sworn affidavits and court documents continue to expose cruel abuse of separated migrant families at the hands of officials and others. One separated mother said that when she finally got her traumatized child back after nearly three months, “he was full of dirt and lice. It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us.”
Other parents described adults being denied the most basic of human necessities. A Honduras asylum seeker, who is remaining anonymous due to safety concerns, had his daughter taken away after arriving at a U.S. port of entry, a legal act under U.S. and international law. In the dead of night, he was woken up, “shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles with other detainees,” and thrown on an airplane to be transported to another facility, a trip that took hours.
“Because the detainees were chained together at the ankles,” he writes, “several stumbled and fell as we struggled to ascend and descend the steps of the bus and airplane. One man urinated himself as the detainees were not given bathroom privileges.”
While the Honduran man passed his initial “credible fear” interview as part of the asylum process, another detained asylum seeker, Elizabeth, has been waiting for weeks to make her case. “Most of the people with whom I have spoken in the detention centers are mothers and fathers of children who also requested asylum,” she said. “No one has interviewed me about my request for asylum.” Elizabeth presented herself at a port of entry on May 19. As of June 20, she continued to wait.
Under Judge Dana Sabraw’s order, the Trump administration must physically reunite all separated children under five years old with their parents by July 10, all children by July 26, and make sure families can communicate, by phone for example, by today, July 6. But, immigration attorneys and advocates who have spoken to separated families say there are no plans.
Among them, the Immigration Justice Project (IJP) writes in the documents, is “a 62-year-old man from Mexico who was separated from his adult daughter.” The man is detained in California, while his daughter is detained in Texas. The daughter’s minor children were separated from them by officials and sent to Arizona, “he believes.” This family came here together, only to be shattered and scattered across the country.
Other separated clients include 70-year-old grandmother and her minor granddaughter, “who she believes is currently detained at a detention facility in Texas, and who she has been unable to communicate with. As of our last communications with them,” writes the IJP, “none of the above individuals had been informed of plans to reunite them with their minor children, grandchildren, or other minor aged family members.”
“Many of the men I spoke with were extremely upset,” wrote Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon after visiting with detained parents. “The fathers expressed great fear about their children’s whereabouts and safety,” adding that they appeared to be “visibly traumatized by their experience with U.S. immigration officials.” Others told him they were threatened with five years imprisonment unless they signed forms agreeing to their deportation. “That kind of coercion is unacceptable, and likely illegal.”
One detained parent among the documents, a Salvadoran dad, said that while at first his son was not taken from him, they were held in “the icebox.” Assuming he means the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) icebox, this is supposed to be a temporary holding cell maxing out at 72 hours, according to CBP policy, and its nicknamed a hielera, or icebox, because of the incredibly cold conditions inside. The dad said they were held there for five days before they were transported and then separated.
“I felt that my life was leaving me when I saw that they took him from me,” he wrote. “I cried like a child. I cried and cried. It was a very great pain. I am detained and to this day I continue crying. What I want to say with this is that we are not criminals for this to be done to us. We are hard-working fathers who fled our country to be able to give our families and children a life with security and without fear so they can be safe. And that is everything to say to the US government, to the judge and to everyone. We are parents, not criminals. It is not a sin to be a parent.”