The Families Hiding from ICE

0:00I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday Story where we go beyond the headlines of the day to bring you one big story. The Trump administration's immigration policies have upended daily life for undocumented immigrants across the country. Some have self-deported. Others have gone into hiding, afraid to leave their homes. Many are still torn about what makes sense for their families in the face of an uncertain future. Over the past year, NPR's immigration correspondent Jasmine Garst has been following the ups and downs of some of the people navigating this moment. She sat down with host B.A. Parker on the Code Switch podcast to talk about her reporting, and we wanted to share some of it with you.

0:48We start with Jasmine's story of a Maryland mom who's taking unusual steps to keep her kids safe. My mom told me it's going to be okay. I worry that something will happen to her, like something will get her. We'll be right back.

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2:11This message comes from Progressive Insurance and the Name Your Price tool. It helps you find car insurance options in your budget. Try it today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. We're back with a Sunday story and an episode about the difficult choices facing undocumented migrants and their families. Here's NPR's immigration reporter Jasmine Garst. The kids say this summer was the summer of nothing, but it was boring as hell. Nothing happened, nothing at all. We didn't go anywhere.

2:49One mother in Maryland told me she quietly lost her mind this summer.

3:00We spent it locked down, she says. We didn't go out. The weather was bad the day I drove down there to the southern part of the state where rivers and creeks crisscrossed the land. It was late August, hurricane season. And Tropical Storm Aaron had led to coastal flooding warnings up and down the mid-Atlantic. I kept kind of eyeing the water nervously every time I crossed a bridge. I was going to check in with a family I wrote about earlier this year for a story about self-deportation. Now, self-deportation is one of the centerpieces of the Trump administration's immigration policy. The message from the government has been, take your kids with you.

3:42They can always come back as adults. But back when we first met last winter, this mother in Maryland told me very firmly she would under no circumstances self-deport with her children. My children were born here, she says. They are American citizens. This mother asked that I refer to her as M. M and her husband live in a pretty rural area of Maryland, and they are both from Guatemala. They're also both undocumented. Em's husband desperately wants to self-deport. He is really out there in the world every day working as a landscaper, and he's quite worried about being detained and taken to a detention center.

4:29And he says she just doesn't understand that it's not the same for her. She works from home making piñatas and party favors for quinceañeras, weddings, birthdays. The couple fights about this constantly. The kids see it and it gives them bad anxiety. Back in the winter, when we first met, her youngest daughter, her seven-year-old, first initial L, had a cold. She kept having to be sent home from school. The real reason was because she was having panic attacks. I feel frustrated sometimes. I was just feeling sad. My mom told me it's going to be okay. I worry too something will happen to her, like something will get her.

5:23After we met that one time, Em and I stayed in touch. She would send me WhatsApp messages almost every day, you know, pictures of her pinatas and stuff your tia sends you on WhatsApp, you know, a daily blessing, softly lit images of flowers or kittens or kittens inside flowers with some motivational quote. And I'd ask about the kids. How is everyone doing? Has the family made any decisions? And then, around the beginning of summer, radio silence. After a few weeks of not hearing anything from Em, I reached out. I could tell my messages hadn't even gone through. I started to wonder if maybe Em or her husband got arrested, deported, or maybe they finally agreed to leave to self-deport.

6:14It was strange that I hadn't heard from her, but this has sort of become a constant in my life as an immigration reporter. For the last few months, on a regular basis, I will have an extraordinarily intimate conversation with a complete stranger. Or someone will find my phone number and call me from inside a detention center, and they will tell me their worst fear, their desperation. They will ask me what I know as if I know. And then that person will just vanish. It's like my WhatsApp is filled with ghosts. So yeah, over the summer, when I stopped hearing from them, I decided to go check in on this family.

6:59As I drove to Southern Maryland in the storm, I was really unsure of what I was going to find. But as I approached the driveway, Someone drew the curtain and these four faces like pressed up against the window. And it was Em and the kids. And they immediately bolted out, smiling and running to say hello. Even though she was wearing not platform shoes. She was wearing wedges, which was kind of hilarious. Because people running and jogging in heels is very funny to me. Just happy to see you. Yeah. She looked the same, even though she's lost a lot of weight. She says her stomach hurts a lot. Son los nervios.

7:47She's still got these very reddy cheeks, and she laughs at everything. She has an infectious, raspy laughter. She's always dressed really cute. You know, she reminds me of a little, like, Fran Drescher. Sometimes it throws me off. Like, she'll be talking about how she had to hide in her house all summer, and it really affected her psychologically. And then...

8:18Once we were inside the house, Em apologized for going silent. She explained that her phone broke earlier this summer, and she just couldn't afford to buy a new one. The party planning business, it's not going very well. She says people, Latino immigrants in particular, aren't doing a lot of celebrating lately. Em's husband still wants to go back to Guatemala. Earlier this summer, he was at work at a landscaping job when ICE agents showed up. He went to his car to lay low, and he sent Em a message on Facebook. They're here. Em's seven-year-old, Elle, explains. One day, when they were working, ice came there.

9:08How did you know about that? Because our dad sent us a message. And how did that make you feel? Sad. And so she didn't eat at all that day.

9:29My bones hurt from the anxiety. We locked ourselves in. I was scared. And that event sent the family into a sort of lockdown for the entire summer. Hence, the summer of nothing. The family was stuck indoors in their small trailer home for three whole summer months. With four children, ages 1 to 12. As Em and I talk, her youngest boy has climbed on top of the laundry machine and is throwing out about a hundred, give or take, plastic Easter eggs onto the floor.

10:10The baby she's rocking is, unbeknownst to her, pointing a very large bottle of glue at me, like directly at my face. and then her seven-year-old walks in holding an upside-down cat. Oh my god, the cat.

10:31She held a strand of her hair and in true M style made a joke. I didn't have these white hairs last time we met, did I? It's not all jokes. The eldest kid, Kay, says this summer was actually incredibly boring. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Boring, because we didn't go anywhere. Kay is 12, and you can really, like, hear her adolescence simmering. This summer, she was selected to go to a STEM summer camp for kids who are interested in science. Her parents pulled her out. They told her the family had to hunker down. All summer activities were canceled.

11:25My husband had to explain to them, Em says, you are U.S. citizens, but we are not. If we take you to the aquarium, to the pool, we could get detained. We could get deported. Without looking at her mom, Kay says, she's excited about school starting again. But I was filled with questions like, what if immigration agents come for me while my kids are in school or as I'm picking them up? And can immigration agents go into the school? Can they ask my kids about our legal status? I heard concerns like this from a lot of parents. Oh, can they? I actually reached out to Ilora Mukherjee to ask about this.

12:14She's a professor of law at Columbia Law School and also the director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at the school. And what did Mukherjee say? There are no confirmed reports of ICE raids or ICE enforcements inside of schools. Mukherjee says she understands the fear, though, because almost as soon as President Trump took office in January, these previously designated locations like schools and churches and hospitals were deemed no longer off limits for immigration enforcement. But she clarifies that agents, and this is really important, agents need a warrant to go into a school. Parents and children cannot be asked about their immigration status by the school.

13:00However, just a few weeks ago in Chicago, A teacher, you might have seen this, Parker, was chased by armed immigration officers into the preschool she works at. DHS said they weren't targeting the school itself, but you can see how the lines for many parents and students feel blurry. So back to Em. Her kids started school in the fall, like kids all over the country. And then a few days later, I got this audio message from her. She had a phone again.

13:42She's standing about a block away from the school bus stop. The sheriff's department is there. She has to pick the kids up, but she's scared.

13:55About an hour later, they get another out-of-breath message. They made it home.

14:07I froze, she says. She grabbed the kids and they ran back home. It's okay now, she repeats. It's okay. Nothing happened. And then she laughs and says, I got as cold as a cucumber, though. I got as cold as a cucumber, though.

14:27That first week of school, Emsa, she did what a lot of parents across America did.

14:35She caught up on her sleep. And then she did something a lot of parents never consider doing. She reached out to a friend who is an American citizen and started the paperwork to give emergency guardianship in case she or her husband get picked up by ICE.

14:57When we come back, host B.A. Parker talks to Jasmine about the process of emergency guardianship and what it means for families either giving up or taking over the responsibilities of parenting.

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16:35Parker and NPR's Jasmine Garst about emergency guardianship. Okay, Jasmine, can you talk to us about what emergency guardianship looks like? I mean, to me, it seems like an impossible place to be in. Like you're caught between wanting to be with your kids and wanting what's best for your kids, but also knowing that you might have to leave them behind if you're targeted by immigration enforcement, you know? Yeah, it's a rock and a hard place for many, many families. You know, the parents I spoke to who did this process of giving someone else emergency guardianship power told me it did make them feel some sort of security, like a sense of control in a world that they feel has gone out of control.

17:28And it also, they also told me it felt like, okay, like some of my neighbors really are watching out for me. The way one parent said it to me was, I'm not happy, but I'm relieved. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's not great, but it, you know, that's one less thing to worry about if there is something to worry about. Yeah. And a lot of parents describe that sense of like, my community does care about me or my friend, my neighbor cares about me. So at the end of the summer, I was working on a totally separate story. in Washington, D.C., and I met a woman who confided in me that she had gotten that call, that she had signed on to be an emergency guardian.

18:19I went to her home, this very lovely house in an upper-middle-class D.C. neighborhood. She says the phone rang one day, and it was her son's best friend's father. She tells me this story. She offers me some freshly baked cookies, some milk. Would you like oat milk or milk milk? Milk milk. Okay. This is like an American-American woman. Okay. Yes, it was very like a different world. She was extremely sweet and hospitable. She asked if we not use her name. I mean, she is American. She's an American citizen, but she wants to protect the man who called her that day, her son's best friend's father. He's Honduran.

19:07So is his wife. They're undocumented. They've been in the U.S. for some 25 years. And they spent the last month or so hiding in their homes. We're not even going to work right now, he says. There's been a heavy ICE presence in D.C. for the last month or so. You might have seen some of the videos, arrests throughout the city, delivery workers being arrested. And the Honduran father says there are literally checkpoints on both sides of his street. Our neighborhood is surrounded, he says. And, you know, you might get past a checkpoint once, but twice. So the only person who goes in and out of that house is their 17-year-old son.

19:56who's their only child. He was born in the U.S. He's a citizen. He goes to high school every morning. His parents stay behind, just hunkering down. And they recently sat down with him and asked, if we get deported, what do you want to do?

20:16Well, and he responded, I don't know Honduras. I've never been. And then he mentions his best friend, the one who the family has known since the boys were in pre-K together. We need to ask them for help, he said. So they called the American mom, the one I'm sitting with having cookies and milk. And when the families met, the Honduran dad laid it out super clearly. We could get detained any minute now. And if we do, I want to ask you if you would be the temporary guardian of our son.

21:00Don't feel pressured, he told them. We understand this is an enormous request. We are putting our son's life in your hands. He is 17. He needs to finish high school. We want him to go to college. He will need guidance. You know, my husband and I just looked at each other and we were like, yes, of course. Right? Like, not even, not a question, not a moment's hesitation. It's not something we entered into lightly. We love them. I find myself seeing people on the street laughing and having fun and asking myself, like, how is that even possible? Just as an American, I am deeply sad and sorry that this is a conversation that we even need to have.

21:49And yet, I really do hold out hope for the possibility that in the long run, it does serve to bring people closer together if we let it. But is this happening more and more? How common is this kind of arrangement? I am hearing a lot about this. I mean, it's not clear how many families have arranged this because it's not people aren't going public with it. Yeah, fair. But I've been hearing a lot about it and I've been hearing a lot about it from families. I've been hearing a lot about it from lawyers. Lawyers I spoke to say they've seen an increase in recent months. I spoke to Ginger Miranda. She's president of the Central Florida Hispanic Bar Association.

22:36What we're advising is, you know, to be prepared. And lately, what they've been doing is they've been holding a lot of emergency guardianship and power of attorney classes across the state. And what they recommend is that people do not make verbal or informal kind of handshake agreements. Make concrete plans through a lawyer, they say. Like having it all legally sorted out. Yeah, she described it almost like a will. Like this is something you don't want to think could happen, but it could. So have the paperwork drawn out. Don't go and tell your cousin, hey, take the kids. It's a smart precaution.

23:15Yeah. There's a reality, which attorney Ginger Miranda says, which is if you do not prepare, the consequences can be really serious. Remember, if a parent is detained, those children are left vulnerable. Sometimes they're left at school. No one's there to pick them up. And without the proper legal documents in place, you know, the children could end up in foster care. Which is exactly the scenario this Honduran family is afraid of. Their son ending up in foster care. So they all went and signed the paperwork to give the U.S. citizen family emergency guardianship.

23:56The American mom says she has told nobody. She does not want to put the Honduran parents at risk. My mom does not know. My husband's mother does not know. Instead, they try to keep the mood in the house light. We try to keep it a little lighter around the dinner table and watch amusing and really sweet television like The Great British Baking Show.

24:29Did you get to speak to the Honduran mother? I wanted to. I really wanted to, and she just couldn't. Her husband apologized for her. He explained very graciously that she didn't want to be rude. It just, this broke her.