A Young Mother From China, Separated From Her Son
It’s four o'clock in the morning. You’re 10 years old. Two officers have abruptly awakened you. Confused and disoriented, you watch as your mother cries and pleads to know if you both will be deported while they put you into an unmarked car. You’re crying, too.
As you exit the car, three more officers approach, grabbing your mother by her arms and pulling her into the airport. You follow quietly behind as your mother, in her best English, pleads with the officers to stay in the U.S. The officers respond by saying, “You came here illegally and deserve to be deported.”
She begs for a lawyer. You’ve been detained for nearly two weeks at this point and still they respond that no one wants to help you, a mother and her young child.
Desperate and terrified, your mother drops to the ground as officers continue to push and pull her to get her on a plane. They stop and yell at her to get on the plane now, or else they will take you, a 10 year-old with no one else in the world, away and put her on a military plane back to China. The threat of separation hangs over everything. You’re crying as your mother crumbles in tears out of fear of returning to the place you fled together.
Next thing you know, you’re back in a car. All you can do is cry. Officers yell back at you and your mother: “Shut up! Nobody cares.”
This is the gut-punching story of our 10-year-old client and his mother. They were nearly deported to China earlier this month, but the mother’s unwillingness to give up on their freedom, even at the very last moment and despite threats, gave their family a fighting chance to find some semblance of safety.
Every day, our advocates hear stories like these — stories that highlight the trauma our clients endure on their journey to safety. Despite growing obstacles to securing asylum and accessing legal aid, we continue to provide critical services that can make a life-or-death difference.
While they were granted a temporary reprieve, they were imprisoned at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, (“Dilley”), alongside dozens of other families with children. At Dilley, families have reported unsafe and unsanitary conditions, as well as obstacles to accessing their lawyers or free legal services from providers like RAICES.
Families have expressed concerns about the water quality in the facility — the water is discolored and has caused multiple children to become sick with diarrhea. Still, ICE refuses to supply bottled water or even boiled water to keep kids safe.
What happens when children get sick? They often have to wait hours or days to receive medical care, the kind of care where even broken bones are treated with suspicion.
Now, even the limited protections that exist to keep children safe are at risk because the administration wants to roll back long-established legal safeguards that prevent children and families from being detained indefinitely.
The administration recognizes that access to legal counsel and due process is lifesaving for families seeking safety. That’s why they’re trying to dismantle three decades of legal standards and discouraging families from contacting legal services providers like RAICES, or even coercing them into waiving their legal and human right to seek asylum.
Children deserve freedom to explore their world — not to be locked behind barbed wire and metal fences. That’s the future that we are fighting for, and we hope that you’ll fight with us to make this future a reality.
When we commit to this work together, we can provide legal assistance to hundreds of families at Dilley and beyond and exhaust every legal avenue as we pursue their short- and long-term safety.
