One of the detained parents that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently tried to separate from their children as part of a horrific “binary choice” effort said that officials shoved a document in her face without any explanation about what the form was about, or even a translated version she could read for herself. They demanded she just sign next to the red “X,” San Antonio Express-News reports.
“Frightened, and wary without her lawyer, Miriam didn’t sign,” the report said. Still detained with her teenage daughter Julieth in a migrant family jail in Texas, she’s among the hundreds of parents who were told by ICE to either agree to be ripped from their kids, or remain jailed together. “It’s not right,” Miriam told Express-News. “They say they’re supposedly freeing the children, but then us, what? […] And how could I guarantee my daughter was going to reach a family member? How would I know?”
The Dilley, Texas facility where Miriam and Julieth are jailed is still holding more than 80 other families, including children with heart murmurs, epilepsy, and respiratory problems, attorneys told Express-News. Julieth is among them, with numerous medical conditions that require constant care from her mom. “Miriam said releasing her daughter without her is not an option,” the report said.
“No one knows the medical care her daughter needs like she does,” the report continued. “No one knows better than her the signs of when she’s having a cardiac episode or how to comfort her when her intestines are burning from gastritis.” Nor should any parent be forced to make this sort of a decision, because ICE has every power to release these families to relative or sponsors to pursue their cases in freedom, as has been done in the past.
Instead, advocates say officials are presenting this “Sophie’s Choice” to families as a way of going around a court order that says kids must be released from these facilities within 20 days, and claiming parents waived their right to their children’s release. ICE is further endangering families by refusing to release them amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. The dangerous and inhumane conditions in these facilities have long been documented; these risks have only increased during COVID-19.
“Millions of families in this country are already suffering immensely from the physical and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” leading House Democrats said last month in condemning this family separation effort. “In these extraordinary times, human suffering need not be compounded by locking up families or instilling fear in the hearts of migrant parents.” These attempted separations come as other reports continue to expose the horrors of the administration’s official family separation policy, two years later.
According to an unpublished Homeland Security watchdog report obtained by BuzzFeed News, officials ripped apart dozens of families who had asked for asylum at U.S. ports of entry in 2018 despite public assurances that certain parents and children there wouldn’t be targeted. The report said that in one instance, officials separated a Guatemalan mother from all four of her children, including a 5-month-old infant. “The family was separated for seven weeks. The mother told inspector general investigators that she would no longer be able to nurse her child as a result.”