Mothers and children granted refuge recount the trauma of domestic detention policies that are pulling apart households long after dangerous journeys end.
MIAMI — After surviving treacherous migrations to the United States, several migrant families are experiencing a second, quieter crisis: separation through arrests and detention inside the country, long after crossing the border.
Unlike the high-profile border separations of the past, this emerging pattern involves immigration authorities detaining parents who are already living in U.S. communities, leaving spouses and children in precarious limbo.
In interviews with The Associated Press, three women shared how their search for safety has been overshadowed by the sudden loss of a partner to deportation or indefinite detention.
Jakelin Pasedo, a Venezuelan refugee in Miami, works cleaning offices and cares for her two sons. Her husband, Antonio Laverde, was arrested in June and held for three months before agreeing to deportation—a choice Pasedo could not follow due to fears of persecution back home. She now hopes, uncertainly, for a U.S. reunion.
Amavilia, 31, from Guatemala, supports her two children by selling food and sweets. Her husband Edgar, a longtime South Florida resident, was deported in June on an old warrant, upending the family’s stability. “I fell into despair. I didn’t know what to do,” she said, now living with constant anxiety.
Yaoska, pregnant and from Nicaragua, wears an ankle monitor while raising her two sons. Her activist husband was detained during an ICE appointment and later deported after failing a fear assessment. “They arrested him right in front of them,” she said, struggling to find steady work despite legal permission to stay.
These accounts reveal a deepening dimension of U.S. immigration enforcement—one that fractures families not upon arrival, but after they have begun rebuilding their lives, compounding the trauma of displacement with the pain of domestic separation.
