Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she was wearing a…
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Amid growing calls from lawmakers and human rights groups to shut down the sprawling Dilley Immigration Processing Center in southern Texas, an analysis shows the number of people incarcerated at the notorious immigration jail for children and families has nearly tripled in recent months. Texas lawmakers and attorneys for immigrant families say a growing number of children at the facility are…
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Vera Swanson is like many 5-year-olds. Her favorite colors are purple and sparkly blue. She loves strawberries. Art is her favorite subject in school. She really likes drawing axolotls. “They’re so cute. I made them today,” Vera said while sitting on her couch in St. Paul with her parents nearby, just days after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti in…
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Two weeks into January, the director of a St. Paul child care center called a family to ask why their daughter had been absent on-and-off since late last year. “We reached out to just see, ‘Hey, what’s going on? Is your child sick?’” said Angela Clair, whose child care center serves more than 70 children. The girl’s mother answered the phone. “ICE is in our neighborhood every…
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The image of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being detained outside of his house upon arriving home from school has gone viral. Wearing a blue fuzzy hat and Spiderman backpack half his size, he faces the bed of a black truck, a white hand holding his backpack. According to the Columbia Heights Public School District in Minnesota, federal agents have detained four students that attend their…
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Israel’s genocidal war has destroyed families and livelihoods across Gaza, leaving more than 39,000 children orphaned, while the widespread destruction has deprived over 80 percent of the workforce of their sources of income. Amid deepening poverty and the absence of alternatives, an increasing number of children have been forced into the streets, resorting to begging as their only means of…
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