Editors’ note: The interview for this story was conducted in Spanish and translated live for all of Verde Magazine staff. Verde has translated all quotes into English. As we never learned the name of our source, we have chosen to give her a placeholder name; Sophia.
They handcuffed me and they took me to the back to the third or fourth floor where there’s small rooms where you stay,” she said. “They take away any pins, belts, jewelry and they keep you there until you can go to a detention center.”
Sophia said she fled Peru seeking asylum four years ago, at the age of 25, after being abused by a family member.
“I fled my country by myself. I don’t have family [in the United States]. I [only] have few friends.”
Although she was represented by a lawyer and was in the process of becoming a citizen, she was taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after four years of living in the U.S., for “violating the terms and conditions of the application” while in person to register, regardless of having no criminal record. Apparently, under the new administration, a one-minute delay was a violation, which is what Sophia had.
In the small room on the third or fourth floor of the same building, she waited to be taken to the detention center, unable to make phone calls.
“We got there at approximately 2 a.m. and we were there until 5 p.m. the next day. They didn’t give us blankets or even the aluminum bed sheets that in other places they do give you,” she said.
While some stay here for days, she was there for less than 24 hours before being moved. Her hands, feet and waist were handcuffed and she was taken by minivan from San Francisco to Bakersfield, without knowing where she was going at the time. In these new rooms, she waited with the four other detainees with whom she traveled and others who had arrived separately.
“They don’t give us blankets, you just wait there without knowing what’s going to happen to you in that moment,” she said.
After a while, she and other detained people were handcuffed and transported by minivan again to a nearby location.
When she arrived at what she later identified as California City Detention Facility in Bakersfield, she was registered, given an identification card, and directed to her new “home.”
“Then from there they gave us a yellow bag,” she said. “They give us clothes because we can’t wear our own clothes, some orange sandals, and they took us to the rooms, where the beds are.”
Although she hadn’t experienced her panic attacks and anxiety for the past four years, as she experienced them again when she was detained, she was isolated until she could see a psychologist. While she had an especially stressful experience, others at the center did not have it much better.
“The truth is that everyone that was there being detained in that moment felt really bad. Because barely anyone has a
criminal charge and almost everyone had a process with the court,” she said.
Even though some of the immigration officers could speak Spanish, they would not talk to those who were being detained.
“The immigration officers are very derogatory,” she said. “They look at you like you are inferior. They won’t tend to you. They will look at you rudely. For them, it’s like Latino/a people don’t matter to them.”
Sophia was detained from October until Jan. 12.
“Three months and almost two weeks,” she said.
At the center, she spent her days reading and talking with other detained people. Others were from different Latin American and Asian countries, of ages ranging from 20 to 80. The vast majority of them did not have criminal records.
“Almost always it would be talking, trying to de-stress, it was the only thing that we could do,” she said.
In the center, men and women were separated. There were about 42 rooms, spread out between two floors, she said.
“Three times a day they locked us up,” she said. “They locked us up from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., from about 11 a.m. to noon, and then from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., and then at 10 p.m. they locked us until the next day.”
The food was flavorless and limited, and bathrooms were cleaned by detainees who were paid one dollar a day.
Sophia was let out when her lawyer submit a writ of habeas corpus, which ensures that a detained person can challenge their detention before a judge.
“They [her lawyer and friends] didn’t think that I was going to get out because it was almost impossible to get out of there,” she said.
While she eventually got out, others remained detained, were deported or even left voluntarily to their home countries.
“Many other people, one of them being my friend, whom I met there, and well, she’s already back in her country,” she said. “Her lawyer didn’t want to keep defending her, and [authorities] wanted to send her to another country so she preferred to leave voluntarily.”
Sophia came to this country seeking a better life.
“I came requesting asylum, she said. “In my country, I was sexually abused by [a family member]”
Even in Peru, she tried to escape her abuser by moving to other cities. As she was already 25, her abuser attempted to abuse his own daughter, but she wouldn’t let him, which led him back to Sophia.
“His daughter confronted him and she mentioned me so [the abuser] came back looking for me,” she said. “So I decided to go far away. I couldn’t explain to you why the person who abuses you wants to look for you. He wanted to abuse his own daughter and he came looking for me with more intensity, because his daughter didn’t
let it happen.”
Sophia said she never thought she would be detained in the U.S., having a lawyer and being in the process of getting a citizenship. Still, she thinks that there are good people in this country.
“I still think there are good people [in the U.S.],” she said. “Things are hard, just like they are everywhere. I think it’s a country where justice is served. In my country, it’s not like this. I can’t report what happened to me because some time has already passed. In my country, you can’t report abuse because there’s no evidence, because it happened to me in my adolescence. So there’s no justice for me, and they can’t detain that person.”
Sophia said detainees would be scared whenever officers were around, as they never knew if they would be taken away.
“The vast majority of people who were there were very scared of the immigration officers because they are people who treat you very poorly.”
She said that it is a lie that government agents are only detaining those with criminal records. She said that they don’t give diabetic people their medications, that some nurses treat their patients very poorly and that they’re not given jackets even when in closed rooms with blasting AC.
“The treatment is inhumane,” she said. “It’s unjust. We know that this isn’t our country, but these people come here looking for help, like in my case.”
