Impossible choices for refugee mothers

Like mothers everywhere, Central American mothers want to protect their children. For many of these mothers, though, keeping their children safe has become nearly impossible. Widespread gang activity, drug trafficking, kidnapping, rape, domestic violence, and crushing poverty have led large numbers of mothers to make the difficult decision, knowing the risks, to seek a safe haven and better life in the United States.  Since October, the number of refugee families apprehended crossing the southwest border has increased significantly—more than doubling since the same time last year. But the reception waiting for these families in a country considered a champion for human rights and freedom is probably not what they expected.   

I am a Spanish-speaking immigration attorney who traveled to the recently built South Texas Family Residential Center for a week in November. Located in Dilley, Texas, 80 miles southwest of San Antonio, the facility holds hundreds up to thousands of Central American women and children seeking asylum in the United States. I went to the center to provide legal assistance to the detainees through the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project run by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.  

{mosads}During my week in Dilley, I saw more desperation and anguish than I ever could imagine. Almost every woman I met with cried deeply while describing her fear of returning to terror at home. One woman was sobbing so much that she had started carrying a hand towel around with her. Most related their fear of the powerful Central American street gangs that tried to recruit their sons or threatened their daughters with sexual violence. Many of their family members had been killed by the gangs, and a weak police force was unable to do anything to investigate or protect them.  

The threats these women and their children face are terrifying and real. Violent, marauding gangs have taken over Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This 3-country region now has the world’s highest murder rate. The murder rate in El Salvador, a relatively small country, reached nearly 30 homicides per day this August. To put that in perspective, El Salvador’s current murder rate is roughly 20 times the U.S. rate, and almost 100 times the German rate. In October, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned of a “looming refugee crisis” in the Americas. But at Dilley, the crisis didn’t appear to be looming—it had arrived. 

The combination of fear, the long and grueling journey north, and the conditions they experienced when they reached the United States pushed many women to their limits. Just listening to what these families had been though filled me with a profound and lingering sadness. 

Most of the families I met with had crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas on rafts and were apprehended soon after by Border Patrol. The conditions the women described being held in Border Patrol custody before they reached Dilley truly shocked me. I heard accounts of women and children, with their clothes still soaking wet from the river, being placed for days in extremely cold group holding cells, which they called hieleras (Spanish for “ice box”) with no beds, and with bright lights left on 24/7. Children over eight years old were separated from their mothers. Women told me of no regular access to drinking water, not enough food, and no opportunity to change their clothes or take a shower. Not surprisingly, many of the children I met with suffered from the same hacking cough, which their mothers told me they developed during their time in the hielera. 

Soon after entering the Dilley center, women were scheduled for a “credible fear interview” with a U.S. asylum officer to determine if they could establish an asylum claim in the United States. This process filled the women with extreme anxiety and my role as a volunteer attorney was mostly to counsel them before their interview. Women who passed the interview could be released from detention with their children to pursue their cases in U.S. Immigration Court. Those who didn’t pass would have a chance to appeal the decision to an immigration judge. But if the court upheld the decision, they would be deported back the dangerous situation they had tried so hard to escape.  

Most of the women I spoke with had relatives in the United States. Even those released from Dilley to their relatives will have to go through a long and uncertain process to be able stay in this country. They will need to find a lawyer to represent them in court, and many immigration judges are not receptive to Central American asylum claims because current case law makes it difficult to grant asylum for gang-related persecution. 

Many of the women at Dilley were being released with a black, chunky electronic ankle bracelet to track their location. This heavy shackle is extremely uncomfortable and even painful for some. But more than the physical burden, the ankle tracker makes these vulnerable women, who have suffered so much, feel like criminals. Faced with an impossible choice of whether to stay or to go, they did what they thought was best to protect their children.  

Blake is an immigration attorney at Blake & Wilson Immigration Law, PLLC in Alexandria, Virginia. She holds an M.A. in international relations, with a focus on Latin America Studies, from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.