What Happens to Refugees When the US Takes Their Babies?

By CLAUDIA ZEQUEIRA

This column is a gut response to images and sounds and was born not as an intellectual desire to sway anyone but more out of a personal need to confirm that, yes, those screaming children President Donald J. Trump ordered separated from their parents at the US – Mexico border are indeed alone in the world and deeply traumatized.

I know because I, too, was in a refugee shelter when I was a kid. My mom and I shared a twin bed because there was no space. I missed my dad, who I was not sure I would ever see again, my grandparents, my home and my friends.

I was not sure exactly why I had ended in a strange country. All I knew was that people were getting thrown in jail, beaten and punished in pretty creative ways back home. My dad, a university professor at the University of Havana, had been fired from his job and was under house arrest. No one was allowed to visit him or they would be arrested, too. His friends, the only couple of good ones he had left, would sneak in food in the middle of the night so he would not starve. Half our family did not speak to the other half. Chants of “Get out, you faggot scum,” were heard throughout the day. Our home was boarded up because objects were thrown at it all day long. A life size puppet was made in my dad’s image, hung from a lamppost and set on fire in front of my eyes. I went to three different schools the year I left my country and was told to tell no one who my family was, what my father did for a living and what our plans were.

The year was 1980 and we were scheduled to leave through the Port of Mariel. Our boat was stolen. We were stuck. My parents scrambled and started some confusing paperwork I knew little about. All I remember was being forced into a car at an ungodly hour and being told it was to go get something called a "passport.” I had never heard of a passport before in my life. In the end, Venezuela randomly gave us a visa, an act for which I will be forever grateful. My father was not allowed out. When I got on the plane to leave Cuba, I remember my mother telling me to take a good look at my dad because that could well be the last time I would see him again. Tens of thousands of Cubans fled during this period, mostly to the United States, but many went wherever they could. I am certain if Central Americans fleeing violence in the region right now could do the same, they would. I am also certain many of those children have lived through far worse than I did.

In Venezuela, the Catholic church and an older, more established Cuban community ran the refugee shelter where my mother and I stayed. The place was extremely crowded, noisy and chaotic. There was no place to really “hang out.” You were either sleeping or eating or showering. We lined up for clothes whenever a shipment came. Nothing fit properly, but we had something to wear. The kids stayed outside all day because being inside was unbearable. Once, while playing with a friend, a man pulled up in a van, grabbed her by the arm, and forcefully tugged. I screamed and grabbed her other arm and pulled in the opposite direction. He must have gotten scared because he finally let go and sped away. I’m a really good screamer, by the way. It took me a while to realize I saved my friend from being kidnapped and probably raped. She was seven.

Eventually, I made it to the United States after my aunt, who lived in Florida at the time and has since passed away, claimed us as a family unit. Decades later, I am witnessing an immigration climate I have never seen in a country to which I also feel very indebted. In all the loneliness and fear and alienating terror that come with the territory of migration, we in the US have added a terror bigger than any other: the terror of losing your parent.

In these conditions, your parent is your protector, your travel buddy, your best friend, the only thing tethering you to safety and to any sense of reality. This is the kind of terror that stays with you forever and you never wake up from. I sincerely hope you take this story in your heart and evaluate the president’s policy to separate children from their parents. Although he has since revised it, many children remain away from their parents. There are several accounts of parents who have been deported and whose children have been left behind. Please consider that separation is both traumatic and inhumane and that many of these children have already been through trauma. It is also unclear how long families will remain in detention even if they do remain together. The indefinite detention of children is not a solution I consider humane either. It is not what you would want for you or your children. Do unto others.

Claudia Zequeira is a former journalist. She is now a college adviser, living in Florida with her dad, husband, daughter and a 4-year old Pomeranian.

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2018

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