When An Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested

Color Lines features this piece that came out in their July/August issue. It is a bit lengthy, but it is a story worth reading to understand the consequences of family separation due to the draconian immigration laws being enforced.

When An Immigrant Mom Gets Arrested
By Julianne Ong Hing and Seth Wessler

BEHIND THE THICK GLASS THAT RUNS THE LENGTH of the Yuba County Jail’s visitation corridor, Tatyana Mitrohina’s eyes glisten, and then fill with tears as she recounts the last time she saw her son. “During the visit, he climbed into my arms and fell asleep with his head on my shoulder while I walked around with him,” she remembers.
Two months after that visit, Mitrohina was sent to the Yuba County Jail in Marysville, California, hours away from her 2-year-old son, who is in foster care. She was convicted on charges that she had hit him. While she does not deny the charges, she does say she had expected to be released from jail and to get counseling and start to rebuild her life with her child. But with the increasing collaboration between local authorities and federal immigration officials, Mitrohina found that she would not get that second chance. The government had slated her to be deported to Russia, the country she left as a teenager.

“When I first got here, I would break down crying once a week, just thinking about everything that’s happened,” says Mitrohina, who is 30 years old.

Immigration and child welfare advocates say that Mitrohina’s story—the loss of her child, her incarceration and detention, and her struggle to care for her child—represents a new and dangerous terrain at the intersection of three government systems—deportation, incarceration and foster care—that are tearing apart poor families and families of color.

While rates of detention and deportation have increased exponentially in recent years, what is happening to immigrant families is not a new story. It has been played out time and again in the lives of Black families who, in the past 20 years, have faced an increase in drug-related arrests and sentences that place Black parents in jail and their children in foster care. As immigrant families find themselves targeted by a combination of public policies, it is becoming clear that their experiences and those of Black families, women and children are troublingly similar.


Rest of article

Living Between Two Worlds

Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would have been like if i had stayed in Mexico. If that one night, i had decided not see my mother again and had stayed living with my older siblings.

Most of the time i think that i have moved on and live a complete life here, but it is still hard to live in this sort of dimension where i feel outcasted-the emptiness in me is still there. I don't know if all DREAMers feel this or if i am the only one and maybe counseling is my best choice, but is really difficult to forget my middle school friends, my house, my dog, the rest of my brothers and sister, my old school. I still dream with all those amazing things.

Although the separation from my family was always a constant in my life, i was free of stress and life seemed much easier.

Education was always available in Mexico, but it was not going to be there for much longer really. So the what could have happened of things can actually be listed... I would not have gone to college, i would have gotten married at a very young age, i would have been separated from my parents for many years, and i would more than likely be a mother by now.

I arrived to the States when i was 13 years old. Ever since then life took a complete shift and many things have been wonderful while there are things that arent so much, but we are now better off because of that shift.

My point is, what happens to our unresolved lives? Our unknown futures and our unforgotten pasts? There is no real closure. Sometimes there is this sense of floating in this sort of surreal nightmare, the why me?! card comes up; this sense of being trapped between two worlds... one world that was left behind and by the year it fades away more and more- memories that get mixed with dreams. While there is the present world in which we live and are constanly been told of what we don't have, what we are and what we are not.

Last night i dreamt with my old house again and i was getting ready to go to school with my friends. When i woke up i was not sure of where i was. It took me a few seconds to regroup and realize that i was here... ready for another day.

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Eight Year Old Separated From Her Mother at Hutto

Immigration Officials Separate Girl, Mom
By ANABELLE GARAY
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 15, 2007; 5:12 PM


DALLAS -- An 8-year-old girl was separated from her pregnant mother and left behind for four days at a detention center established to keep immigrant families together while their cases are processed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say they had to transfer the Honduran woman Oct. 18 because she was potentially disruptive, having twice resisted attempts to deport her.

ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said guards and ICE staff watched over the child after her mother was removed from the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, a former Central Texas prison where immigrant families with no criminal records are held while their cases are processed.

People who want the facility closed, contending it puts children in prison-like conditions, say the agency put the girl at risk.

"Here, it's the government itself that has the custody of this child and then leaves her without proper supervision," said Denise Gilman, who oversees the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, which provides legal services to Hutto detainees. "We certainly don't want to see it happen again."

The 28-year-old woman, who was about seven months pregnant at the time, and her daughter lost a bid for asylum; they were reunited when they were sent back to Honduras. Immigration Clinic attorneys plan to file a complaint with the federal government.



The woman's sister, Irma Banegas of Fort Worth, said her sister and niece told her they cried inconsolably after they were awakened and separated.

"They've never been apart," she said.

Banegas said the pair fled Honduras earlier this year to escape an abusive relationship and growing gang violence in that country, including attacks that broke her sister's ribs and left her with scars. She asked that her sister and niece not be named because of concerns for their safety.

The girl and her mother had traveled from El Balsamo, Honduras, to Mexico and then crossed by boat into South Texas, where they were apprehended in August. They were held for about two months.

The agency attempted to deport the woman twice in October, but she wouldn't comply. ICE officials didn't reveal specifics about her efforts to resist deportation. But as a result, Rusnok said, she was considered a high risk for disruptive behavior and moved from Hutto to a South Texas detention center in Pearsall.

During the separation, the girl continued her regular routine at Hutto and "felt comfortable and safe," Rusnok said in a statement.

"Such family separations at Hutto are extremely rare. ICE personnel took extraordinary care to minimize family disruption and separation time," Rusnok said.

Advocates said detainees who endanger themselves or others should be removed, but decry the lack of guidelines for transferring or punishing troublemakers.

A lawsuit over conditions at Hutto was settled in August. Immigration officials agreed to changes including privacy curtains around toilets, a full-time pediatrician and dropping rules that required families to be in their cells 12 hours a day.