Local kids fight to remain in country after mother’s deportation
One local family in western Riverside County is feeling the effects of the crackdown on illegal immigration. The kids are fighting to stay in the country after their mother was deported to Mexico.
“I feel empty inside…I don’t have nothing to care about.”
A boy is fighting back tears as he speaks, devastated at the loss of his mother who was deported four weeks ago.
“Just sad and lonely,” he said.
He and his sister are undocumented and have been in the US for more than a decade. They live in Perris, and they’ve asked that we don’t show their faces or use their names because they are in fear. The 14-year-old boy says about a month ago, his mother went to his school to pick him, but was instead picked up by immigration agents. His 19-year-old sister said there is now a void in their family.
“It’s really awful because I don’t have my mom and I’m sad,” she said. “I don’t know how to be a mother figure for my siblings.”
The two siblings and their younger sister are staying with their aunt, and being helped by the TODEC Legal Center, as they search for their mother.
“She needs to give her caregiver power of attorney to the aunt so she can handle their situation, enroll them in school, get them on Medi-Cal,” Luz Gallegos, a TODEC Legal Center activist, said. “The youngest little girl has down syndrome, and she needs a lot of assistance.”
Their mother was swept up as part of the nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration spearheaded by the Trump administration. Her teen daughter, making a plea to the president to show compassion.
“Let us be a part of a family. We’re human beings like him and we still need the love of our parents just for putting us apart. It’s affecting us.”
The siblings also have five other younger sisters, who are American citizens, but the family says they are now in Mexico with their mother.
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