El Salvador has one of the worst murder rates in the world, so I knew the threat was serious. I needed to find a safe place for my sister, my son and myself. Our only option was to flee to a country where we couldn’t be found as easily — the United States. But after we crossed the border, we found no relief. Instead, we were held for two months in a family immigration detention center in Artesia, N.M., run by a for-profit company.

The day-to-day conditions were horrible. The food was often expired, the milk was spoiled, and we weren’t provided with snacks for our children between meals. When we saved food for snacks, it was taken from us and thrown out because of concerns about rats in the dorms. Children went to bed hungry. And we could get water between meals only by asking the officers. Sometimes they wouldn’t bring any. The water we did have made us sick.

It was no place for human beings, let alone for families with small children.

When our children were sick, we waited days for medical attention. When one mother whose daughter had asthma informed the officers that her child needed medical care, she was told that she should have thought about that before she came to the United States. Another mother asked for medical assistance for her son but it never came. She was deported, and her son died just a few months later.

We weren’t allowed to sleep in the same beds as our children, even the youngest ones who wanted to sleep with their mothers to feel safe. Deportations usually happened in the middle of the night, with flashlights pointed in our faces to wake us up.

Most of the officers didn’t speak Spanish, which made it hard to communicate. Things were even worse for the indigenous women among us who spoke only their native languages. Once, officers physically forced an indigenous woman to take a shower while she was menstruating, violating both her privacy and her cultural beliefs. As a woman, witnessing this type of treatment was heartbreaking — and it has stayed with me in the years since.