Migrant detention details

Woman detained in Arizona couldn’t leave cell or bathe

A migrant woman detained in Arizona said she couldn’t leave her cell for 10 days. However, the worst part was being separated from her son.

For 10 days, the woman was not allowed to leave her cell at an Arizona migrant detention facility, according to a court filing this month.

She couldn’t take a bath. The drinking water tasted like bleach. And when there was food it was usually uncooked noodles.

But most painful of all, she writes in an account of her detention was being separated from her son soon after they were detained.

“The worst thing that has ever happened to me is having my son taken from me,” wrote the woman, who had crossed the border illegally with her son fleeing abuse in Brazil.

Her account offers a glimpse into what hundreds of immigrants have experienced in Arizona during the Trump administration’s roughly two-monthlong zero-tolerance policy that separated thousands of families at the U.S.Mexico border.

On July 26, a court-imposed deadline passed for the government to reunify nearly 2,600 children with their parents. Trump administration officials said 1,442 children had been reunited as of July 26.

The woman, who in the court filing goes by the name W.R., left Brazil with her nine-year-old son to get away from her husband. Her statement has been translated into English from Portuguese.

“My husband was an alcoholic, used drugs, sold drugs, and was abusive to me and my son. He beat me, causing bruises, bleeding, and pain to many parts of my body. He also beat and burned my son, A.R. On more than one occasion, he threatened me with his gun. On more than one occasion, he threatened my son and me with a knife.”

She wrote that she has been trying to get a divorce for six years but her husband won’t allow it, and that she had asked police for help but they refuse to get involved, even when she was “severely beaten.”

The woman and her son entered the U.S. in May and surrendered to the first Border Patrol officer they saw.

The officer took their “money, jewelry, passports, IDs, other records, coats, hats, and backpack.” He spoke to them in Spanish, which they didn’t understand.

A Portuguese-speaking officer talked to them by phone. Then Border Patrol took them to “a detention facility somewhere in Arizona.”

“Immediately after our arrival, my son A.R. was separated from me. As officers led me to a cell, I took A.R.’s hand and tried to bring him with me. The officer stopped me and abruptly took A.R. away. A.R. was crying and calling out for me, but the officer quickly removed him. Everything occurred so fast, I was very confused.”

The woman was put in a 15-foot by 15foot cell with about 90 other women.

“The cell had a small bathroom with no door, with a video camera that faced the toilet; the camera filmed everything when you used the toilet,” she wrote. There were no beds.

She could see her son crying in a different cell with other children “of all ages.” They did not have beds or mattresses. After two days, officers let her hug her son before they transferred him to a different location.

“This is the last time I saw my child. I cannot express the pain and fear I felt at that point.”

Last month, 17 states and Washington, D.C. sued the Trump administration over its zero-tolerance policy that led to the separation of migrant families. The more than 300-page lawsuit contains translations of direct accounts from 18 immigrant adults who were separated from their families, some in letters handwritten in Spanish. W.R.’s account was among them.

The woman stayed at the Arizona facility for about 10 days. She “was cold, hungry, and thirsty at all times.”

“The only food we were given were ‘Cup of Noodle’ cups. Most of the time, these noodles were not cooked, though there were a few times they gave us hot water. The only water available to drink came from a small sink next to the toilet and tasted as if it had been treated with bleach. The water was very hard to drink and burned my mouth. The children were given the same food and water as the adults. There was no way to bathe or shower, no soap, and no way to maintain basic hygiene. The cells were never cleaned during the approximately 10 days I was held there.”

Each night, she slept on the cement floor.

Then she was transferred to an unknown location, where conditions were about the same. After a day or two she was taken to a third detention center, where the women were given milk, bread and fruit, and small mattresses. She was allowed to shower for the first time since being detained.

She was then taken to the Eloy Detention Center, where “I was given a small room with a bed, was allowed to shower, and was given regular meals for the first time.”

About 20 days after she was separated from her son, she spoke to him for the first time.

“When I spoke to A.R., someone was with him monitoring his phone call.He was not allowed to tell me his location or how he got there. He was only allowed to tell me that he was doing alright, that he had a bed, and that he was going to school. If he tried to tell me anything else, the phone was taken away from him.”

Soon after, her brother paid $7,500 in bond and she was released. She traveled to Massachusetts to live with him.

She has struggled to reach her son, who was taken to Texas, and to navigate the complex system to get him back.

Four weeks after they were detained, the woman reached a case worker at the facility where her son was held. She learned she had to apply to be his “sponsor.”

After an attorney agreed to work with her pro bono, she had an interview with her son’s shelter, BCFS in Baytown, Texas.

“The first questions the case worker asked were about my religion and religious practices. She specifically asked me whether I was Christian and attended church. When I said I was religious, the case worker responded favorably saying: ‘Great!’ “

After the interview, the case worker said she and all adults living in her brother’s home had to be fingerprinted, which would take days.

“Upon hearing how much time it would take, I felt awful. I had been trying to get my son back for nearly a month, and I was exhausted and very upset. I cried in my attorney’s office. I did not understand why I needed to be fingerprinted again, because I was fingerprinted when I was first detained at the border. I felt like my life had become a nightmare. The worst thing that has ever happened to me is having my son taken from me.“

The process became even more confusing and frustrating: What she was told was a fingerprinting appointment was actually an orientation.

The next appointment was two weeks later and 50 miles away.

The woman and her son had still not been reunited as of the court filing date — more than four weeks after they were separated. Since she did not use her full namein the filing, it is not clear if she has since been reunited with her son.

“This delay is very difficult for me and my son, and I cannot understand why the government will not immediately release my son to me. I am his mother,” she wrote. “This has been the most horrible experience, being separated from my son.”

Last month, 17 states and Washington, D.C. sued the Trump administration over its zerotolerance policy that led to the separation of migrant families.