All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
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.
Stay up-to-date with the politics team. Sign up for the Teen Vogue Take
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.
In her own words, Soofia wrote:
Soofia’s story is one heartbreaking example among many, and builds upon myriad anti-immigrant policies Trump tested out during his first term.
My colleagues and I have borne witness to some of Trump’s most atrocious attacks on immigrant families, having been on the frontlines of the family separation crisis under the Zero Tolerance Policy that captured public attention in 2018.
The new administration has unleashed a torrent of policies that have caused irreparable harm to people and families seeking safety. From heinous asylum bans to revoking visas and attempting to revoke green cards, to invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport people to a maximum security prison in El Salvador without due process, generations of families have been impacted and an untold number of lives have been devastated.
It’s no secret that Trump has scapegoated immigrants and their families since day one of his political career, and we are watching his cruel agenda play out with renewed vigor and vitriol in the first few months of his second administration.
Now, we’re looking at the return of both immigrant family detention and family separation, even though it has metastasized into different, more insidious forms since Trump’s first term. While he’s taking these actions a bit more quietly than his other, louder immigration orders, we cannot be lulled into complacency; otherwise, we risk more people getting trapped in the detention system where they are unlawfully stripped of their rights and freedoms — rights and freedoms that are promised to everyone on U.S. soil by our Constitution. This violation has implications for all of us.
When we went public with Soofia’s story, we received an outpouring of support for Soofia and her family. So far, 3,519 people across the country have sent letters calling for her immediate release to the San Antonio office for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. That is a big deal.
Public pressure of this scale has often been an effective accountability tool, a reminder to ICE that the American public stands in opposition to unjust and unconscionable harms. But, this time, despite thousands of people watching and advocating for Soofia, ICE has yet to respond.
Soofia’s immigration case is strong and carries with it the same life or death stakes of her ailing mother and brothers, for whom she is the primary caregiver. And public pressure is an effective accountability tool. It works when the American people make their collective will known at a scale that can’t be ignored. That’s why we need more people to raise their voices so that this administration cannot quietly disappear more of our neighbors — and families like Soofia’s can remain together and free.
