Dad awaits his own deportation hearing

Alissa Zhu | Mississippi Clarion Ledger

Barbara Gauntt/Clarion Ledger, Clarion Ledger

The man clasped the 4-month-old baby girl in his strong, tanned hands as an energetic toddler climbed on his shoulders and hugged his father's neck.

He placed the nipple of a baby bottle near the infant's face. She latched on eagerly.

Until a week ago, she had been breastfed by her mother. That abruptly ended when her mother was arrested at Koch Foods in Morton, where she had worked for four years. The mother and hundreds of others are suspected of living and working in the U.S. without permission.

Now, the father is raising three young children on his own. He's continuing to work to support his family. Complicating things — he's facing his own deportation proceedings stemming from an earlier arrest, with the next court date set for 2021.

The raid at Koch Foods, a poultry processing plant in Morton, came the morning of Aug. 7, just as the night shift was leaving and the day shift was arriving, workers told the Clarion Ledger.

They reported hearing the sound of helicopters and seeing children cry out for their parents as hundreds of workers were loaded into buses and taken away for processing.

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Similar scenes played out at six other food processing plants in Mississippi, resulting in about 680 arrests.

The scale of the operation was massive — it amounted to the largest single state workplace immigration raid in the country's history, said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Mike Hurst.

Immigration officials released about 300 people on "humanitarian grounds" and gave them future court dates. Among them were pregnant women and people who had minor children at home without another parental caretaker.

The 4-month-old baby's mother has not come back. She's currently being held at an ICE detention facility in Jena, Louisiana, said Dalila Reynoso, an advocate with Justice For Our Neighbors who traveled to Mississippi from Texas after news broke of the ICE raids.

Reynoso and an attorney friend are working on the young family's immigration case. They hope the circumstances — the age of the infant, the breastfeeding and the woman's lack of a criminal history — could convince immigration officials to let her out on bond quickly.

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He came to the U.S. for job opportunities

The husband spoke to the Clarion Ledger under condition of anonymity because of his undocumented status and fear of arrest or reprisal. His priest, the Rev. Roberto Mena of St. Michael's Catholic Church in Forest, served as translator.

He and his wife have three kids. The oldest, an 11-year-old boy, is in school. Their 3-year-old boy has a sweet smile and is full of rambunctious energy. And their youngest is the infant.

All three children were born in the U.S., and therefore are American citizens.

For people who entered the country without permission, like the the parents, the few existing paths to obtaining legal status are highly restrictive and complicated. There's no way to "get in line" for the vast majority of undocumented immigrants, according to the American Immigration Council.

The husband came to the U.S. 14 years ago. He left his hometown in Guatemala because there was no work there, he said.

Mena said many of the Guatemalan immigrants in his congregation come to the U.S. because of a lack of jobs in their home country. A prolonged drought has devastated the farming industry there. More recent immigrants are also fleeing violence and extortion from narcotics traffickers, he said.

To come to a land of opportunity, the man had to leave his family behind and journey across an expanse of desert.

Later, he met his wife in the U.S. They lived near each other and began talking. They had a lot in common because she faced similar hardships in her immigration from Mexico.

He said he loves that during challenging times, she's calm. She's the type of person who gets things done and helps him remain calm as well, he said.

Now, she's behind bars.

'She doesn't know what tomorrow will bring'

The husband said he's only shared a brief five-minute phone conversation with his wife because he doesn't have much money for calls to the detention center.

During the call, she cried and told him about the experience of being questioned then transported by bus to Louisiana.

"She was in shock because of this experience, she was traumatized," he said.

All he could do is to tell her to trust in God and pray.

"I will take care of the children and I will find out how the lawyers could help you in this situation so don't worry. You are not alone," he told her.

Reynoso told the Clarion Ledger she and an attorney traveled to the detention center in Louisiana on Sunday night to meet with the man's wife.

They spoke to her through a glass partition. The wife looked unwell, with deep bags under her eyes, Reynoso said. She had obviously been crying.

"She looked really distraught," Reynoso said. "She had this lost look."

The legal team is hoping to get the woman released on bond soon, so she can return to her family.

"She hasn't seen her children. She doesn't know what tomorrow will bring," Reynoso said.

Reynoso said she doesn't understand: "Why do we have a mother in a detention center with a baby that's 4 months old and who is breastfeeding?"

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MS ICE raids: Baby, kids miss detained mother; dad cares for family

Child asks about his mother every day

For the most part, the father has tried to maintain normalcy in the lives of his children. While he's at work in the mornings, a friend helps look after the kids. After work, he spends as much time as he can with them. He takes them to play in the park.

He's tried to explain to them what has happened to their mother. He's told them that he has no control over when she returns, and that he will do the best he can to take care of them.

The oldest son understands what's going on, the father said. Every day after school, he asks about his mom.

The father is worried about how the sudden departure from breastfeeding is affecting the little girl. On Wednesday afternoon, she suckled enthusiastically on a bottle. However, he's had trouble getting her to eat in the past.

The father said despite the challenges he and his wife have faced as undocumented immigrants they have also found opportunity in the U.S.

He can make money. His children can get a good education.

"(I hope) all the adventures (I) have to face coming from Guatemala to here, they're not in vain," he said through the translator. "It's important that (we) continue with the American dream even though all of this happened with (us) now."

'Still a lot of fear in the community'

St. Michael's Catholic Church serves about 200 families and has Mass in Spanish, English and Vietnamese, Mena said.

About half of those families were directly impacted by the ICE raids, according to the priest.

During Mass, in addition to delivering a homily, Mena gives updates on the latest news. He coordinates with other churches and organizations that are gathering donations for families. He also organizes groups of volunteers for community outreach.

There are many families that are too afraid to go out in public, even to church or to send their children to school, he said. So, he has people visit them in their homes. They provide comfort and help.

"There's still a lot of fear in the community," Mena said. "....The families are unstable. Because their children, they don't feel the support. Even when they have these ankle monitors, the children are saying, 'I will lose my parent any day or any time.'"

He said he's heard from a lot of people who want to move away from Mississippi — away from the place they experienced the trauma of the raids and to where there are job opportunities outside of chicken processing plants for undocumented workers.

"These scenes (from the raids) are in their mind, and they have nightmares about this," Mena said.

U.S. Attorney Hurst has said the immigration raids were "simply about enforcing the rule of law in our state and throughout our great country."

Mena sees it differently.

"Another aspect that they are not mentioning is that laws have to be just," the priest said. "And these kinds of laws, they are not just."