When Immigration Detention Means Losing Your Kids
Maria Luis (center) with her children Angie and Daniel on the day they were reunited in 2011. The children spent five years in the foster system after federal immigration officials sent Luis back to her native Guatemala. Courtesy of Omar Riojas
NPR highlights the human consequences of immigration enforcement.
About five million children in the United States have an undocumented parent. Many of these children are U.S. citizens. These families have always been at risk of separation if the parents are detained, but expanded immigration enforcement actions under the Trump administration may increase that risk.
Immigration attorneys are warning that without preventative measures, more children will end up in foster care, and their parents will struggle to regain custody from outside the United States. They point to cases like that of a Guatemalan woman named Maria Luis, who was separated from her children back in 2005.
Federal immigration agents picked up the young mother, who was living in the country illegally in Grand Island, Nebraska. She was detained for about a month, separated from her 7-year-old son and infant daughter. She thought the children would rejoin her on the flight to her native Guatemala, right up until an immigration agent escorted her to her gate.
KJ