Her partner was detained. Now she and their baby face Christmas without him: ‘My family is broken’ | US immigration

At St. Peter’s Catholic Church in San Francisco’s Mission District, families took refuge from a cold December night to celebrate a mass in honor of immigrants’ rights.

A choir sang hymns. A majestic Christmas tree stood sentinel at the entrance.

“We are all, in one way or another, pilgrims on this earth,” Father Moisés Agudo preached in Spanish from the pulpit.

On a bench to the left of the altar, Roxana held the bright screen of a cell phone in front of her 10-month-old daughter. Under a thick shock of black hair, the baby stared intently at an image of his father in an orange jumpsuit, calling from a Texas detention center.

“Look, it’s your daddy,” Roxana cooed.

Nightly video calls are the only contact Roxana has had with her partner, Joel, since federal immigration agents picked him up outside their San Francisco apartment in June.

They are among many families in the United States facing the holidays without loved ones who were swept away by Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Although a threatened influx of Customs and Border Protection agents into the Bay Area this fall never materialized, immigrant residents here have been arrested in court hearings, mandatory registrations with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and targeted raids. More than 120 people have been arrested at ICE’s San Francisco office or the city’s immigration court since late May, according to local media outlet Mission Local, which tracks the detentions. Religious leaders chained themselves to the doors of the ICE office last week to protest the detentions.

As the holiday season approaches, a time that emphasizes family cohesion, activists brought meals to people whose loved ones were detained and organized legal support. The Catholic Church has held masses for immigrant rights, like the one in San Francisco, across the state on the feast of Saint Juan Diego – the humble indigenous farmer to whom, according to legend, the Virgin of Guadalupe chose to appear.

Families with missing loved ones say community support has been a balm in a holiday season that seems anything but normal.

“My family is not the same this Christmas,” Roxana said. “You could say it’s broken.”

Both from Honduras, she and Joel met in San Francisco. Roxana had arrived recently, fleeing gang violence in their home country, while Joel had first arrived in the United States as a teenager. (Like other immigrants and family members interviewed for this story, they asked the Guardian to use their first names only because of fears of retaliation from the Department of Homeland Security.)

“Her life was here,” Roxana said.

The two moved in together during the Covid pandemic. By 2023, they had found a bright two-bedroom apartment in a building near Lake Merced, and they both worked in maintenance, large enough for a growing family that included Roxana’s two teenage children and Joel’s adult daughter. This year, baby Briana arrived.

Joel and the baby quickly developed a close bond, Roxana said, and he would put her to bed every night. He got a second job at a restaurant and saved money to take his family on trips to Lake Tahoe and Santa Cruz.

But it all ended one morning in June, when immigration agents approached Joel as he walked to his car to go to work. Roxana said she hasn’t been told why Joel was arrested, but she suspects it was related to an arrest several years ago for driving under the influence, for which he took court-ordered classes. The family can’t afford legal representation for Joel, she said, and she expects he will be deported. Roxana is seeking asylum in the United States, where she is legally allowed to work and her children go to school.

For now, the separation seems indefinite.

“I never imagined something like this could happen to my father,” said Joel’s daughter Yeili, 20, who witnessed the arrest and still struggles to talk about it.

It took three days for the family to discover that he had been sent to a detention center. The first night, Roxana says, her little girl refused to go to sleep until she gave her a shirt with Joel’s scent on it.

Six months later, Joël’s absence weighs on the family apartment. Roxana couldn’t bring herself to put up a Christmas tree, so her 15-year-old son did it. His sister, who moved in with her five-year-old daughter after Joel’s arrest, helped decorate. The three adult women in the family pool their income from household chores, as well as donations from community members, to pay the apartment’s $3,100 monthly rent.

Roxana coped with the dramatic change in her family’s circumstances by dedicating herself to her work with Faith in Action, a faith-based community group that organizes affordable housing and protections for immigrants.

She first encountered the group at her son’s school. Most of the members were Catholic and Roxana was evangelical, but she appreciated the way the group organized immigrant parents to advocate for themselves, instead of waiting for politicians to solve their problems.

After Joel was detained, a Faith in Action organizer invited Roxana to a meeting with other families affected by immigration enforcement.

“At first, when we started telling our stories, everyone was crying,” Roxana said. “And then it was funny, because at the end we were all laughing, happy. Because we had released all our feelings.”

That night, the group decided to raise money for a legal defense fund for immigrants with children in San Francisco schools.

“I am fighting so that other children are not separated from their parents,” she said. “I don’t want another child to go through what my daughter is going through.”

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Roxana gathered with other parents and community members for a Tuesday afternoon meeting with Faith in Action. They discussed how to organize and influence local government, as well as national concerns, like whether Trump would succeed in repealing the birthright for children like Roxana’s daughter.

At the meeting, Roxana received good news. A week earlier, she and other members of the group had met with a potential donor for their immigration legal fund. After hearing the stories of Roxana and others with detained loved ones, the donor decided to give $15,000.

“We talked and it touched him. We touched his heart,” she said, beaming.

Then she waited in the cold for an Uber ride to another meeting with immigrant community leaders. While her niece was playing with baby Briana, she answered a call from Joel and told him about her day.

She still doesn’t know what she will do for Christmas. Maybe she’ll make tamales, but she’s not planning a party.

“In other years, Joel always invited his friends and family,” she said. “Now you could say our family is the community. »