A 6-year-old girl living in Queens, along with her mother and teenage brother, are hundreds of miles away from each other after federal agents grabbed the family members following a routine check-in at immigration court in New York City last week.
“School is supposed to start in three weeks. Dayra and her mother should be buying school supplies,” Councilmember Shekar Krishnan, a Democrat representing Jackson Heights, told News 4.
Instead, Dayra, a student at PS 89, the Jose Peralta School of Dreamers in Queens, and her mother are in a detention facility nearly 2,000 miles away in Texas.
Krishnan says the family, originally from Ecuador, showed up to 26 Federal Plaza on Tuesday for an immigrant check-in last week.
“It is horrific to find out that ICE has detained and taken into custody and separated a family with a 6-year-old girl and her older brother Manuel, who is 19,” Krishnan said Saturday.
Krishnan says the older brother was separated and taken to a detention facility in New Jersey. A spokesperson for NYC Schools shared the following statement:
“When we hear about a family that is being detained, we have– with their permission – connected them with community and agency partners who can offer legal support and other resources.”
In the meantime, Krishnan says his office is in contact with the girl’s family members that remain in Queens are are working with legal aid organizations to get the family out of custody.
“Family separation is cruel it is unnecessary it is not making our community safer. What it is doing is spreading horror and terror in neighborhoods like my own in Jackson Heights and Elmhurst,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Dayra, her mother Martha, and her older brother all entered the country “illegally” in December 2022.
“They have all received final orders of removal from an immigration judge,” the spokesperson said.
