Morena Vasquez called Georgia her home for 23 years after escaping the violence and murder in El Salvador.
A mother to six children, Morena, 38, held two jobs. She moved her family from a trailer into a five-bedroom rental home after her husband – a Mexico native – was deported.
Through it all, she remained happy, and was grateful that she no longer lived in fear.
One evening, though, the life she loved, the life she had so preciously crafted, irrevocably changed.
Several days after the Trump administration began separating children from their parents at the border, our Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) received one or two calls from fathers whose children had been taken.
After a 1,500-mile trek from Honduras, Moises and his 6-year-old son, Carlos, crossed the border together in May.
Immigration officials stopped them near McAllen, Texas. After only a few hours together in custody, immigration officials took the boy without warning to a separate area and placed him in a cage. Moises was handcuffed and taken away, too.
They never had a chance to say goodbye.
Teresa Olea Agaton has been detained in Ocilla for 10 months after she was stopped for driving without a license. She is a mother of six and has no major criminal history.
A group of faculty, staff members and students at UNC School of Law, part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, volunteered during spring break for the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) – a project of the SPLC that enlists and trains volunteer lawyers to provide free legal representation to detained immigrants facing deportation proceedings in the Southeast.
A Nigerian immigrant – who is the primary provider for and caretaker of his two sons with significant health concerns – is being deported, without even the opportunity to say “goodbye” to his children after more than 25 years in this country.
On the sunny, brisk morning of the first day of Vanderbilt spring break, I am cramped in a bronze minivan with six other students, cruising along the highway out of Nashville.
All of us are Vanderbilt students, but we have only just met. My six companions are all law students. I am the lone graduate student on the trip who is helping as a Spanish interpreter, although I have taken immigration law courses. To break the ice, we go around one by one and introduce ourselves, including where we are from.
I spent the last week working with a small group of law students and attorneys at a detention center in rural Georgia. It has been two days since I’ve returned, and I still don't truly have the words. Last night I cried, and today I cried again from processing thoughts and emotions of this week.
When I volunteered for SIFI at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, I didn’t know what to expect. But I certainly didn’t expect this.
I didn’t expect to be afraid when I entered the first gate and it shut behind me, as the second gate in front of me remained closed. I was literally trapped between the two outside entry gates, like one of the hamsters I used to own.
Yalda Godusi is a third-year law student at Vanderbilt University Law School in Nashville, Tennessee. She recently volunteered for the Southeast Immigrant Freedom Initiative (SIFI) – a project of the SPLC that enlists and trains volunteer lawyers to provide free legal representation to detained immigrants who are facing deportation proceedings in the Southeast.
