In the tiny yard of an immigrant prison in the remote town of Lumpkin, Georgia, Mateo sat down, trying to enjoy his one hour of outdoor time.
But before he knew what was happening, more than 70 other men, mostly Cuban, also sat down in the yard. They were staging a peaceful protest to demand answers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about the status of their immigration cases.
As Robert speaks, the burdens he’s had to bear cause him to speak quickly. He only pauses to take a breath when he can no longer hide his tears.
“I’m a prisoner no matter where I go,” Robert, 40, said. “I’m trapped. I’m tortured in detention, and I’m tortured on the streets of Honduras. I just want to go somewhere without racism. It’s been really difficult.”
After nearly two years in immigrant detention facilities, longtime U.S. resident Joseph Thompson – who is suffering from a deadly medical condition – thought he was about to be set free when the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) issued a ruling in his favor.
But then, in a rarely used maneuver, U.S. Attorney General William Barr exercised his authority over the immigration court system to certify the case to himself – essentially giving him the power to not only reverse the BIA’s ruling in Thompson’s case but also to alter the course of perhaps thousands of other cases.
The protesters carried signs reading “Free asylum-seekers,” and “Richwood … your paychecks are covered in blood.”
They stood outside of Richwood Correctional Center near Monroe, Louisiana, where just a few weeks earlier, Cuban asylum-seeker Roylan Hernandez-Díaz, 43, became the second person to die in ICE custody since the new fiscal year began Oct. 1.
Down a bumpy neighborhood road in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico – a crime-ridden city in the state of Chihuahua with more than 1 million people – sits a migrant shelter for women who’ve been trapped in Mexico under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Daniela Doerr’s life changed when she removed the blanket covering her stillborn conjoined twins at the hospital.
Thirteen years later, the image is still etched in her memory. Doerr, 31, also suffered two miscarriages in 2006. She points to the tragedies as the moment her life took a dramatic turn for the worse, sending her down a path that would ultimately lead to an immigrant prison.
In Juárez, migrants wait for a number, their fates uncertain.
The Martinezes were traveling on I-10 in Mississippi in June 2017 when their pleasant family vacation spiraled into terror.
When Samuel called his family from the immigrant prison nearly six hours away from his home in South Carolina, his 8-year-old son was angry.
“Papa, are you going to come home?” Angel asked his father, who was calling from Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. “I want to be with you, in the center.”
Samuel told his son he would return home soon. But he didn’t know if he could keep his promise.
“I was always afraid I would be deported,” he said in Spanish during a recent interview. “I never knew if I was staying or being deported back to Honduras.”
