We arrived at the border at Calexico, Calif., on Dec. 31. Despite appealing for help, I was turned away by the Border Patrol agents. Desperate to reunite our family, I found us a way across in the early morning hours of Jan. 1.

We were caught by agents after we crossed and taken to one of the detention centers known as “hieleras,” or iceboxes, because they are kept so cold. There I learned that Kevin was taken to the same detention center with Grethshell and she had been separated from her father . Two fellow migrant women told me that five agents held him down while they ripped her from his arms. Other migrant women were asked to watch her.

When I and my two other children were released on Jan. 2, my uncle confirmed what the women had told me. Kevin was charged with a felony for returning to the United States after having been deported. He was taken to jail, while our daughter was sent to a shelter for migrant children in San Antonio.

The family separation was not reported to the court on his charging documents. The charges against him were dropped, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still using those initial charges as an excuse to keep him detained indefinitely while he fights for asylum.

I was told I would be reunited with my daughter in a week, but first I needed to fill out paperwork. Then I was told to provide a credit card with up to a $4,000 credit line for her flight, an impossibility for me. Officials refused to say who was looking after her. Finally I got fed up and went to the press. Grethshell was finally put on a plane and brought to me after I threatened to go to the address I had for the shelter manager and get her myself.

When a social worker put my daughter in my arms on Jan. 30, she was inconsolable. My whole body shook as I held her and tried to soothe her, telling her that everything would be O.K. She was so sick I had to take her to the doctor the next day. For three weeks she resisted me, fearful, when I tried to hold her. She still cries out for her father at night.

I know I am not alone. There are around 311,000 immigrants who have requested asylum after escaping violence in their home countries like us. Our future is uncertain. My children and I were just evicted from the home we shared with six other people. I’m trying to survive as a single mother of three. I don’t know if we’ll be granted asylum or sent back to our deaths at the hands of the gangs.