Deported Without Their Children

Thousands of women cornered by misery and abandoned by their husbands have been crossing Mexico and Central America for the last decade in search of a better life in the United States. They have risked their lives and have faced all sorts of predators (the mareros and their gangs, the coyotes who made them victims of human trafficking in exchange for money or sex, the immigration officers who got something out of it). Afterward, many of these women have been arrested and repatriated by force. They have been forced to leave their children in the United States, the place where they were born, in accordance with decisions made by judges. These women have endured what had to be endured. They escaped from where they were, crossing the border and the desert to fill up factories and workshops located in inland towns across the United States. They are now members of a selfless crowd that fed their families with the few dollars they could take out of their low wages.

Although they became invisible, many of these women were caught in police raids and were imprisoned. Some of them were found guilty of federal crimes and served prison sentences. Others were taken to the border and ended up in the country they had escaped from. At this point they became more pauperized than they were when they started the crossing.

In the end, they would only bear the traumas and their debts to the coyotes. However, that was not the worst. Deportation had taken away something far more valuable for them: their children, who were born in the United States and hence were legal citizens. U.S. judges from different states concluded that those Latin American women were not adequate mothers and that their children would be better off with a good American family. Their children were taken away and given up for adoption.

These were not a few women, but a great number. A conservative estimate by the Applied Research Center (ARC), a center that defends racial justice, stated that at least 5,100 children lived in foster homes in 2011 because their parents had been arrested or deported. According to their projections, 15,000 children could live in the same situation in the next five years. In 2009, a joint national survey conducted by the Urban Institute and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) revealed that “for every two arrested immigrants, a child is left behind.” According to the Urban Institute, approximately 5,000 children living in the United States would have at least an undocumented parent.

Powerful Americans, Republicans or Democrats, seemed to be indifferent to this issue. Barack Obama’s administration put an end to the massive raids that used to take place during the George W. Bush administration (2000-2008). Even so, the number of deportations keeps on increasing. In 2011, a record 397,000 immigrants were deported, and a similar number were arrested. According to the ARC, during the first six months, the federal government threw out more than 46,000 mothers and fathers of children possessing U.S. citizenship.

However, they were not alone. Two Guatemalan women, María Luis and Encarnación Bail Romero, became two of the most emblematic cases. An alliance of activists and lawyers fought for their rights as the fate of thousands of people stood at stake.

Both María and Encarnación came from different regions of the most dangerous country for women in the world: In 2010, 695 women were killed in Guatemala, while 646 were killed between January and November 2011. These two women settled down at a distance of 1,000 kilometers from each other, in two different states of the United States. Nonetheless, their vicissitudes turned out to be quite similar. Their stories about poverty, treason, loss, struggle and hope have been reconstructed here according to the criminal records of their cases and some interviews with their lawyers, immigrants’ rights activists, academics, Guatemalan diplomats and other experts.

In 1997, María Luis, who was at the time pregnant, left Joyabaj, in the district of Quiché — one of the most ravaged departments due to the genocide against indigenous peoples during the Guatemalan Civil War (1969-1996). Her family took care of her two other children. After the severity of the clandestine trip, she arrived in Grand Island, Nebraska, which was a common destination for other immigrants (in 2010, 26 percent of the city’s 48,520 inhabitants were of Latin origin). She got a job at a refrigeration company.

In 1998 she gave birth to Daniel. Five years later, she received the news that her mother was on the point of death in Joyabaj. María left Daniel with a relative in Nebraska and traveled to Guatemala to see her mother for the last time. Returning to the United States took her a whole year; she had to pay a coyote and cope with the awful journey across Mexico for the second time. When she arrived at the Arizona border she was pregnant again.

Angélica was born in the Arizona desert earlier than expected. Three weeks later, in February 2004, she arrived in Grand Island. By then she was ill. She spent a whole year in and out of hospitals. Doctors would not have a diagnosis until later, when she was diagnosed with asthma. María understood neither the diagnosis nor the instructions about Angélica’s treatment, because she was an illiterate — she did not speak English, and Spanish was her second language after Quiché, a Mayan dialect.

In 2005, she was reported for child abuse by a neighbor. A policeman at the door is the nightmare of every illegal immigrant. María lied: She gave a different name. However, the policeman discovered the lie and arrested her for obstruction of justice. María ended up in prison. Her children, American citizens, fell in the hands of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

Nebraska’s family justice system was as alien to her as outer space. The court appointed for her a [public defender], but he did not do much. María remained in prison until she was deported to Guatemala in June 2005. As she was deported, she could not attend the hearings at which the situation of her children was discussed. Consequently, the judge resolved to take them away from her.

“The situation of undocumented immigrants is, undoubtedly, risky, and this case seemed to be an example of that,” the judge stated. He added that the children had never lived out of the United States, and so Guatemalan culture was foreign to them because they had never been there. María could not provide them with a good education because she had not completed the first year of her own. Moreover, she had abandoned two other children in Guatemala when emigrating. The judge sent the children with a family who wanted to adopt them. María was deported and returned to Joyabaj. Back to the drawing board. Once a month, she was allowed to speak to her children on the phone. However, the judge did not give her permission to know their phone number. María would have to wait for the family to phone her.

In April 2009, The New York Times reported that the government was taking not only María’s children away but also the children of other Central American immigrants. From that moment, María’s fate started to change. A powerful law firm, DLA Piper, took charge of her case. On June 26, the Nebraska Supreme Court allowed María to appeal. This was an unprecedented triumph: Until then, the federal government would prevent deportees from being heard again at a U.S. court, even if flagrant injustices were noticeable in their cases. In July 2009, the court ruled that María could keep her children. Almost a year later, last August, Daniel and Angélica, aged 12 and five, could see their mother in Joyabaj. However, the U.S. government did not allow her to stay there, and so María, with two little American citizens in her care, went back to where she started.

In 2006, Encarnación Bail Romero emigrated from Guatemala to Carthage, Missouri, where a brother and a sister of hers were already living and where she had been deported from a year before. She got a job at a frozen chicken company. She would send her family, which was in Guatemala taking care of her two young children, what money she could. In October 2006, Carlos, her third child, was born.

On May 22, 2007, some police officers from the migratory service burst into the company and arrested more than 100 illegal immigrants. Encarnación was among them; she was using the name and the Social Security number of a different individual. According to a federal statute that was later abolished by the Supreme Court, she was arrested for identity theft and sent to a detention center in New Mexico, which was located 1,300 km away.

They appointed a defense counsel for her, but he did not speak Spanish and Encarnación did not speak English, so they had to resort to an interpreter. The counsel advised her wrongly and she accepted: She pleaded guilty and as a result spent two years in prison. Later on, her counsel was convicted of domestic violence, and she lost all legal aid.

Carlos, who was a seven-month-old baby back then, stayed with Encarnación’s brother at his house. She could not speak to him or her sister for weeks. First of all, she had to find out where she was; then she was not allowed to speak on the phone. When she was allowed to, the call turned out to be costly ($3 per minute); she could not afford it, and her siblings refused to accept the collect call. Meanwhile, Carlos was changing homes every five minutes. Encarnación’s brother said that he could not take care of the baby and he gave it to her sister. However, as she had children herself and was working all day, she left him with the Velazcos, ministers of a local evangelical church, who offered to babysit him for free. Little Carlos spent more time with the Velazcos: First, from Monday to Thursday, and later, on weekends.

Encarnación had been in prison for four months when her brother went to the Velazcos. They told him that the government had taken Carlos away from them, but it was not true. They had resolved to give the baby to Seth and Melinda Moser, a young couple who could not have children. The Mosers had started the child adoption process.

Encarnación, who was still in prison, did not have any idea of this. When she finally could speak to her sister, she told her that Carlos was under the custody of the state.

Laura Davenport, a specialist on child development in the school district of Carthage, visited Encarnación at that moment. Davenport could speak Spanish, and in the past she had helped her get some milk and a cradle for Carlos, as they used to sleep on the floor. The state would give milk for free, but Encarnación could not get it because she was afraid of formally registering the birth of Carlos. Encarnación asked Davenport to help her recover her son, but Davenport argued that she should give him up for adoption because she was not an adequate mother: She was poor, and she would be sent back to Guatemala, a miserable country in which her son would not have any future. On the contrary, with an American middle-class family, Carlos would have all that she could not give him. Encarnación insisted on not wanting to move away from her son, but Davenport refused to help her.

David Kelly, the judge who had to decide about Carlos, shared the same opinion as Davenport. In October 2008, Encarnación, who was still imprisoned, was unable to attend a 106-minute hearing where no one spoke on her behalf. The judge stated that she was not entitled to be a mother as she had “abandoned” her baby. “She illegally entered this country and started to commit offenses, so her lifestyle cannot provide her son with stability,” he declared. “A child cannot be educated this way, always in hideouts or fleeing,” he added. According to the judge, Encarnación had nothing to offer: “She cannot provide him with food, clothes or shelter in the long run.” However, the Mosers, who were the owners of a small company and had more income than expenses, were the ideal parents for the kid, as they could spend more time with him, pay for a babysitter and provide him with medical coverage.

When Encarnación heard about it, she managed to convince the authorities of the prison to alert the Guatemalan embassy, where they were already aware of similar cases. Thanks to the embassy, some activists and the article in The New York Times, Encarnación got the same lawyers that María had: Omar Riojas and Christopher Huck from DLA Piper. In January 2011, the Supreme Court of Missouri ruled that the procedure had been so unfair that Encarnación deserved another trial. This trial will take place next Tuesday, Feb. 28. Hearings are set to last four days. In the end, the court will decide whether Carlos must come back with his mother, something which is likely to happen if we take into account the arguments at the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the result is still to come.

Encarnación was allowed to stay in the city in which her son is living while awaiting the verdict. Davenport, the assistant who betrayed her, was dismissed because she lied (she stated that she went to the prison to visit the mother and help her) and lobbied in favor of the Mosers. The Mosers are at the forefront of a campaign to keep the kid, who is five years old and calls himself Jamison. It seems he does not remember his previous family.

These personal stories belong to a collective story that is superior to them. Deborah Anker, director of Harvard’s Immigration and Refugee Program, declares that the effect of these stories will be “similar to the one that took place at the time of slavery in the United States.” “The Afro-American community was severely damaged because of the breaking of the family unit when the slaves were sold no matter what their family situation was. The effects echoed into the future, and they are still echoing in the present.”

“Families are being shattered and communities are being cut into pieces,” she adds.