Mom recounts time behind bars

‘I just want the chance to be back with my kids’, says woman who was held in Otero County

EL PASO — When Concepción crossed the border with her three children seeking asylum in early June, she immediately approached a U.S. Border Patrol agent parked under the international bridge.

“‘Get in,’ ” the mother from El Salvador said the agent told her and the kids.

That was the start of their ordeal in the United States.

The woman is among dozens of mothers who spent time in the Otero County Prison Facility in Chaparral, N.M., during the zero-tolerance prosecutions of everyone who crossed the border. Her cellmate was an immigrant woman who was pregnant.

Concepción’s children are more than 2,000 miles away in a shelter in New York City.

As the Trump administration scrambles to meet the second phase of a court-ordered deadline to reunite

hundreds of immigrant children with their parents, she talked about the pain of separation in an interview with the Journal last week inside the El Paso Processing Center, where she was transferred earlier this month.

“I just want the chance to be back with my kids,” she said.

Since they were taken away “at midnight” on June 10, she’s been able to talk to her children a few times on the phone. “I tell them to be patient,” she said. Concepción has an 11-year-old son and two girls ages 8 and 10.

“They say they miss me and then start to cry,” she said, fighting back her own tears.

While she tries to be strong for her children, she’s struggling to cope.

Concepción said she has spent most of her time behind bars at the Otero County prison. She was an inmate from June 17 to July 11, when criminal charges were dismissed and she was transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

At the New Mexico prison, she said, immigrant women banded together to support each other. Many were mothers. Several, such as the woman who shared her cell, were pregnant. Inmates were responsible for keeping their area clean, said Concepción. She covered for her pregnant cellmate because “the smell of Clorox when I was cleaning the toilet made her sick to her stomach.”

She said she was so nervous when she arrived at the detention center, “my hands were shaking.”

When she asked for medical attention, she said, a doctor at the detention center told her, “‘All the mothers have those types of problems.’”

Concepción said she was advised to “read the Bible” and given two ibuprofen pills.

Rumors are rampant inside the detention center, where many mothers fear they may have signed documents giving their children up for adoption, Concepción said.

“Nobody explains the process to them,” she said, noting many parents do not have attorneys.

Concepción is on a “preclearance list” for reunification, according to Linda Corchado, her pro-bono immigration attorney.

“The problem is that the process of reunification is still unknown,” Corchado said Monday. “We don’t know how well these agencies are communicating with ICE officers.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is caring for the separated children in shelters across the country, is working with the departments of Homeland Security and Justice in a five-step plan that involves a criminal background check of the parent, as well as DNA or other proof of parentage.

More than 11,000 children are in HHS custody, most of them detained after crossing the border without their parents. Just under 3,000 were separated from their parents, most during the zero-tolerance crackdown at the border.

“HHS, DHS and DOJ are working rapidly to reunify children and their parents,” according to a statement on the Health and Human Services website.

While she is detained, Concepción’s children are experiencing “unprecedented levels of post-traumatic stress,” Corchado said.

“As this deadline looms, I’m very nervous for Concepción and her children,” she said. “My greatest fear is that they will only be a ghost of who they used to be.”

Concepción said she was waiting in ElSalvador to join her husband, who was already in the United States. He’s a former police officer who has an asylum claim filed in U.S. immigration court.

But she said she was forced to f lee El Salvador with their children after a gang member told her at gunpoint, “‘You have 24 hours to disappear,’” she said.

Now, the days drag on as she waits for word from the U.S. government when she will see her children again and what her fate will be as she seeks asylum.

“I can’t go back to my homeland,” she said.