As I write this, our 19-year-old client Soofia is locked up by herself in a remote detention facility in Southeast Texas. Before I go any further, I want to confirm that she’s given us consent to share her story — an act of tremendous bravery amidst dire and unforgiving circumstances.
Soofia and her family arrived in the U.S. this February after fleeing violence and abuse in Iran. Together, they dreamed of finding a safe place to land and build a new life.
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Instead, they were apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon entering the U.S. After weeks apart, they were reunited at a detention center in Karnes County, Texas, run by a private prison company, where Soofia took care of her ailing mother and brothers — until Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released them. The family can pursue their immigration case freed from the cold confines of immigration prison. Except for Soofia. She remains alone in government custody with deportation orders. Because she’s over 18, it’s at ICE’s discretion to consider her part of the family unit or to treat her case as independent. If she’d been just a bit younger, she might have been released with her relatives — an arbitrary marker of who deserves the chance to survive. As we’ve seen time and again, cruelty is the essence of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, leaving us limited in our options when we fight for equity and humanity under the law.
My organization, RAICES, knew it was only a matter of time before the Trump administration restarted the horrific practice of family detention — and that families would once again suffer the weaponized threat of separation.
This administration doesn’t tend to do a lot of things quietly, especially when it comes to attacking immigrants. So it’s been especially concerning to see families held in detention centers in Texas in recent weeks without great fanfare, including families with children as young as one and who have been in the country anywhere from a few weeks to as long as 10 years. (Touting the imprisonment of families is perhaps too risky of a public reminder that the administration is not, in fact, going after the proverbial “bad guys.”)
The harms intentionally inflicted upon immigrants and their families by the Trump administration cannot be overstated. As was well-documented during the first Trump presidency, family detention has enormous health impacts for children in particular, including permanent developmental damage for some — as well as trauma that has the potential to last generations.
In Soofia’s case, she has experienced worsening panic attacks since being separated from her family. Outside Karnes, Soofia’s mother struggles to sleep at night, and her young brother with autism has been overcome by confusion, anger, and anxiety — even refusing to eat for several days due to profound distress.
And Soofia, alone, faces the imminent risk of deportation — a cruel decision that would send her back to the dangers she fled.
