‘Help, my kids are at school’: Trump’s immigration pressure targets immigrant mothers

The Trump administration’s targeting of migrants has focused on women in recent weeks. After images of men handcuffed and deported to Guantánamo Bay or El Salvador, the detention of mothers in front of their children has captured public opinion. Several videos have gone viral due to the excessive use of force and the impact of family separation.

“Help, my children are at school,” a Venezuelan mother cried in anguish as ICE agents took her away after leaving an immigration court appointment in San Antonio, Texas. At the same location, another migrant mother was arrested along with her seven-year-old son. The Honduran woman suffered a panic attack, and the child comforted her by letting her know he was still with her. A Mexican immigrant was also captured as she was leaving the courtroom. She was taken away in front of her two daughters and husband.

“They’re seeking to sow terror because they want to convince migrants to self-deport. A regular deportation process costs between $16,000 and $17,000 per person deported. If they manage to convince them, it will be much cheaper,” Adam Isacson, director of the Defence Oversight program at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told EL PAÍS. He suspects that these videos will have an impact on Donald Trump’s approval ratings. “The most radically anti-immigration population doesn’t exceed 35%, so that this whole spectacle could backfire on them in the short term, and I think that’s something they’re not considering,” he added. However, a study by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research reveals that 46% of adults in the United States approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with a ten-point increase in approval ratings for his economic management.

The government remains focused on increasing the number of daily arrests, no matter what the cost. It is against this backdrop that thousands of migrant mothers are being arrested and separated from their children. Attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security are filing lawsuits in court to have judges dismiss their cases without due process. “Women have always been at much greater risk. Since they make the long migration journey, walking across the continent to reach the United States, they are among the most vulnerable population. It could also be argued that the impact on children is greater when their mothers are detained,” explains Mary Kapron, Amnesty International’s researcher for Canada and the United States.

The goal: 3,000 arrests per day

On June 5, a senior ICE official told Fox News that the agency reached a record 2,368 arrests, and they celebrated making the 1,500th arrest in a blue state like Massachusetts. However, the goal set by the architect of the White House’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, is 3,000 arrests per day. The only way this can be done is by targeting migrants who are already in the system: beneficiaries of the now-defunct humanitarian parole programs, CBP One, and pending asylum seekers whose applications are being dismissed overnight. Migrants with TPS protection, which is still in effect, are also being detained in an attempt to meet the quota.

“With this Administration, the rules have changed. Government lawyers are pressuring judges to close cases, and they wait for migrants until they are inside the courthouse to detain them and subject them to expedited removal proceedings. The detainees are not only foreigners without criminal records, but many are heads of households,” Isacson complains.

Another obstacle migrant mothers face, like many other foreigners, is the lack of legal assistance. They show up alone for immigration court hearings, unaware of their rights and the laws that protect them. “Most detained immigrants don’t have lawyers, they don’t know why they’re being detained. All of this makes them more vulnerable,” Kapron says. The outlook is even more grim after the Trump Administration cut funding to organizations that provided legal assistance to migrants.

The trauma of family separation

Deportations are tearing at the social structure of entire communities and causing incalculable harm. “Family separation, mistreatment in immigration centers, the exposure of raids involving abuse, the appearance of immigration agents without uniforms, masked and carrying weapons of war... It’s all part of a staging that aims to show or generate an atmosphere of fear that contributes to the idea that it’s better to self-deport than to be expelled by the government,” says Carolina Jiménez, human rights expert and director of WOLA.

The impact of the recent detentions on families is enormous. Hundreds of American children have witnessed the detention of their parents or seen them disappear from their lives overnight. “It’s true torture, a life-changing trauma, losing their home, their safe place, and the world they knew. The experience can be even more traumatic because they often don’t have the chance to say goodbye. They’re dropped off at school, and on the way or the highway, mothers are detained and taken out of the country in a matter of days. The next time they speak again is through a video call. I can’t imagine anything more cruel,” Kapron says.

Thousands of children are being left in the care of their father, a close relative, or a third party, but with an uncertain future. The Department of Homeland Security lacks a plan to care for them. “There isn’t a single dollar to support them. Beyond the exception of living with a relative or a friend, there’s nothing else. That’s why the family separation strategy is so effective for them... It’s a wave of abuse on a historic scale in the United States. After the civil rights movement 60 years ago, we aspired to become a multiracial democracy, and now we’re rolling back all the gains. It’s not just a repudiation of Latin American immigrants, they are dismissing anything that doesn’t belong to the dominant group. With the arrival of white South African refugees, the message was quite clear,” Isacson concludes.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition