Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has increased sharply under President Trump, and the agency has ramped up its requests to local prisons and jails to hold immigrants for pickup as well.
Ingrid Mejia, a 25-year-old farm worker from Greenville, is one of them. She was detained for 125 days and separated from her three-year-old son for even longer. Kristina Cooke and Ted Hesson reported on her story for Reuters. Cooke joined The Ohio Newsroom to discuss Mejia's case.
On how Mejia came to America and immigration detention
"Mejia came to a port of entry at the US-Mexico border when she was 17, as an unaccompanied minor. She was fleeing sexual and gang violence in her home country. After a few months in a children's shelter, she was released to pursue her asylum case. And two years later in 2019, she found a job in rural Ohio packing eggs into cartons.
She was driving to work one morning in February [of this year] when she ran a stop sign and collided with another car. There were no injuries, but she was written up for driving without a license. On the day of her court hearing, she didn't have childcare for her three-year-old son, who is a U.S. Citizen, and so she brought him with her. She thought she would pay a fine and go home, but because this was her fourth citation for driving with out a license, the judge sentenced her to three days in county jail.
When she was booked into jail, that alerted ICE, who issued something that's called a detainer to the jail to hold her for pickup."
On what happened to Mejia's son
"Officials in Darke County first tried to figure out what to do with her son. Mejia gave them the address of a woman who she thought would be able to watch him during her three-day sentence. The court asked a local police chief to go to the address, but the woman didn't open the door because she thought the officer might be working with ICE. So as a result, he ended up in foster care. County officials told Maira Vasquez, a US citizen who's been helping her, that this was the first such case that they'd worked on.
Mejia said ICE officials told her if she signed a deportation order, she could get her son back. But at the same time, county officials were telling Vasquez that their priority was the boy's best interest and that they had their own processes. So there's a lot of mixed messages."
On hardline immigration proponents' response
"We spoke with Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restricting immigration. And she said Mejia's driving without a license misdemeanors shouldn't be minimized. And the Department of Homeland Security also noted that Mejia had admitted to being in the country illegally."
What happened post-detention
"So she was released from immigration detention in early July after an immigration judge dismissed the deportation case against her. The judge ruled that she had a right to make her case for asylum before an asylum officer because she came to the country as an unaccompanied minor. But after she was released, county officials told her that the boy had bonded with his foster family and they recommended that a gradual transition would be in his best interest.
Mejia said that when she first saw him again, he recognized her, but he didn't speak to her. But she said that she heard him speak in English and that he clung to his foster parents. But then last week, she got some welcome news. A county official and the foster mother dropped him off at her house and said he could stay with her with regular monitoring visits until the case is closed."
