Thread by @elizondogabriel

We spoke to a Brazilian mother who was fleeing her country and seeking asylum in the US. She was a victim of domestic violence. Her abusive husband repeatedly threatened to kill her. Fearing for her life, she took her 9 year old son and fled to US for safety. This is her story:

First, she didn't want her name used. Or her son's name used. She crossed into the US (legally - at official border crossing) in Arizona and voluntarily surrendered to border agents and requested asylum. That was on May 28.

"The patrol officer asked me if I was ok. I said yes. He asked me where I was coming from. I said Brazil. He asked why I was coming. I said, 'to save my life and to save my son’s life.' He asked me all this on a telephone translation thing."

"He took all my belongings and he began to fill out some papers and then he asked me to sign. All my belongings stayed in his car. He put us inside another car, in a cage with a lock, and then that car took us to the detention center."

At the detention center she was separated from her son.

"We were grabbing onto each other and crying. I was holding onto my son. My son was holding onto me. We were both crying. We didn’t speak the language. There was no one there that spoke Portuguese. No information."

"No one was telling us anything. They just pointed to two cells. And then they took my son forcibly from me and put him in the cell and put me in the other cell across the way from my son."

She was put in a cell with women. Her son was put in a cell with other kids. The cells had thick glass that faced each other. Mother on one side, kids on the other side. This is how she described it.

"We squeezed ourselves to the front of the cell, so we could see each other. Because we were so desperate, crying, the other mothers let me squeeze myself to the front of cell so I could see my son. My son was squeezed to the front too so we could see each other a little bit."

How many women were in your cell?

"My cell, on my side, it was a cell that was meant for 20-30 women but there were 90 of us in there - you could barely move."

Ninety? Nine-zero?

"Yes."

And how many kids were in the cell for children?

"I can’t tell you how many children there were because the children were all trying to squeeze themselves to the front of the glass trying to see their parents."

How old were the children?

"The children were all ages, from babies to 17 year old - all ages. 2, 3, 4, 5, to 17 year old's - all ages - the place was packed."

Then things got worse
"I see some new people walking by and they went into the cell and they just chose some children like they were supermarket products on a shelf. And then I see one of them walking with my son - taking him away. I started pounding on the glass."

That was 35 days ago. The last time she saw her son.
In the meantime, she was detained.
"We were treated really bad - there was no hygiene. The place that we stayed for ten days, it was never cleaned, we never showered, there was no brushing teeth or anything like that."

On June 20 she was released from detention after her brother helped pay $7,500 bail. She now lives with family in US. Son is still being held. They have been able to talk 4 times on the phone, including last night, where they had 4 minutes to talk.

"He wanted to know when I was going to come and get him. He was crying and he said that he was hungry. Last night they gave him only water and something really spicy that he couldn’t eat and he asked if there was something else, but they said there was nothing else to eat."

Staff who connect the call will not say where her son is being held. But a lawyer found out it's a shelter in Baytown, Texas. Son cries to mom, says he can't communicate with most staff due to language barrier.

Lawyers have filed suit against federal government to force immigration officials to reunite this mom and son. In meantime, govt has asked her to fill out complex paperwork called "Family Reunification Packet" to re-gain guardianship of her child. She did. Sent it via FEDEX

Lawyers say there is such a backlog of reunification cases, it could be late July before they are together again. (Unless lawsuit forces govt to act sooner on judges order. No ruling on that yet).

As for the mother, she says she was humiliated in detention.

"They sometimes put us in weird positions and they’re checking us, I guess, for drugs. I’m not sure what they’re checking for in our hair and our bodies. For things I don’t know."

For now her focus is on finding her son. But she doesn't understand why this is happening.

"The government is concerned about our nationality, our race, our religion but they are forgetting that we are immigrants, yes, but also human beings."

She concluded by adding:

"Thank you so much for listening to me. I hope we can make a difference because there are lots of mothers still in the situation that I am in."

Story tomorrow on @AJEnglish @AJENews #AJNewsGrid

[Source for tweets: US District Court Affidavit and personal interview with mother]

For those interested, here is our video story about this case>>>