The author, a Minnesota immigration attorney, wrote this Feb. 11, shortly after her client was released from Camp East Montana, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center at Fort Bliss.
By Terja Bouvin Larsen
Early this morning, a young adult son, who also serves our country in the Army National Guard, boarded a plane from Minneapolis to El Paso to pick up his mother. He didn’t want her to have to fly home all by herself. She has been detained in El Paso since Jan. 12, 30 days. She was released yesterday evening.
Her name is Lidia Escobar Maya. She has three children who are 24, 21 and 12. She is dearly loved by her family, her church, her community and everyone who has the good fortune to know her, including me. During this entire ordeal, every time I had conversations with her, Lidia found a way to encourage me and lift me up.
Lidia has attended the same church for 17 years. She has lived in the same home for 13 years. She is from a small Minnesota community west of the Twin Cities. She is a deeply devout Catholic, who is a servant leader in every sense of the description.
From her humble place in life, Lidia finds ways to lead, encourage and make others’ lives better in whatever way she can. This whole time, her family was deeply connected to and concerned for her. I can tell that they have been led through example by their mother. They remained calm, kind, concerned and faithful.
While I am sure that behind closed doors they had many moments of despair and anguish, they continually found a way to come back to feelings of hope.
I spoke to Lidia this morning and she was ecstatic to be free at last, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement put an ankle bracelet on her, which tracks her every movement. She slept in a shelter last night called Annunciation House, which is run by a Catholic group.
As I spoke to her, Lidia was just leaving Mass. Her priority was to attend Mass and give thanks for her release.
This morning, in my conversation with her, on her own phone, as she was leaving Mass, Lidia described her stay at the detention center as a “spiritual retreat.” She treated it like a test of faith. She found ways to lead those around her. She conducted prayer circles and Bible studies and found a way to spiritually, mentally and emotionally survive this experience by supporting those around her and staying grounded in her faith.
And I know that the experience was actually a nightmare because I pushed for details. I needed details to make her habeas corpus petition stronger. Lidia described the back pain she lives with each day due to the screws she has in her back from a prior accident. At home, she has supplements and other comforts that help her live with her pain. At the detention center, she had to fight to get one dose of ibuprofen.
This woman of faith described her hands being zip-tied and the marks on her wrists. She described the shackles she had to wear on her hands, feet and waist. She described the times it rained and the beds got all wet in the temporary detention buildings, not much better than tents. The women had to double up in the remaining dry beds.
Lidia described the cold she was experiencing and the fact that they only got one blanket each. She described having to wear the same pants every day and wear a towel while her pants were air-drying after hand-washing them in the bathroom sink with a tiny packet of shampoo.
She described the mean guards, who are super stingy about soap, shampoo, toilet paper, etc. The food was like eating a TV dinner three times per day, but worse.
Lidia described the breastfeeding mothers with swollen breasts who were barely allowed to pump because the guards wanted their milk to dry up. And there is more, but you get the idea.
This mother of three had filed an application called military parole in place long before she was detained, which is still pending. Her son is serving in our military and helping his parents was one of his motivations to join the National Guard in the first place.
Lidia entered the United States without inspection 23 years ago. Under our law this is a minor infraction, akin to a speeding ticket or maybe driving a car without a license. I get that people think it is wrong to enter the country without inspection, but we have all done something wrong in our lives.
Besides entering without inspection, Lidia has had two traffic tickets in her entire history of living here in Minnesota.
Some parents of U.S. citizens get really excited when their child is about to turn 21. They often come to me asking what they can do about their immigration status.
For those who entered without inspection, I tell them the only way you can do something about your immigration status is to return to your home country for 10 years and then try to come back.
One of the few ways a citizen child can help a parent who entered without inspection is by serving our country in the military.
Here we have a situation where a young man has joined the military to help his mother adjust her status. With this process, the law allows the parent to be paroled into the United States, which creates a process where the U.S. citizen child who is 21 or older can help their parent become a lawful permanent resident.
This young man, who is on his way to Texas to pick up his mom because he doesn’t want her to have to travel by herself, wants nothing more than for both of his parents to finally be lawful in this country after more than 20 years of residing here in Minnesota.
He helped his mother file this application, which they filed in good faith believing that it would make her safer. Instead, it seemed like ICE was waiting outside Lidia’s home when she was detained.
She had given all of her biographic information, her fingerprints, her address history, her work history, her photo, letters of support, copies of identity documents, etc. to the U.S. government with the hope of eventually becoming a lawful permanent resident.
Now, she has spent a month in a tent city detention center on Fort Bliss, a military base, in El Paso. Her son is serving our country.
Terja Bouvin Larsen is owner and managing partner of Bienvenidos Law Firm in Anoka, Minnesota.
The post Opinion: After 30 days in ICE detention at Fort Bliss, a Minnesota mother resumes her fight to stay with her U.S. citizen children, including one in the National Guard appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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