I Am Not the Enemy

Names and locations have been changed/redacted.

My name is Esther. I love this country. I love the people. I’m a caregiver. I love helping others. I am not the enemy.

In my country, I had a situation where I had to flee for my life. That’s why I decided to come here to the United States 13 years ago to find a new home and a safe place. When I got here, I felt like I finally found it. I felt safe. I met beautiful and wonderful people over here who received me with open arms.

I started from nothing. I worked where I could. I developed a lot of skills. And then during the pandemic, I was able to start working in a senior community. I became a caregiver. I love my job. I love to help people. That’s why for me, what’s going on is so sad, because mostly all the people that are being targeted are hard working people, not criminals. They never did anything wrong.

The day I got detained, I was traveling between health care facilities. The police stopped me, not ICE. They stopped me while I was driving. They said they were giving me a warning because I did not do a full stop at a stop sign. The police officer asked me for my name, and then for my social security number. I told him that I could not give him my social security number, and he saw in the system that my identification was from [redacted].

So they took me to the police station. I was there for a couple of hours.

And then ICE came.

It was the worst experience of my life.

I have never been to jail. I have never even been in a police station before. But when ICE came, they had chains in their hands and they were playing with them, making a show. They told me to turn around and open my legs. They searched me all over, and then started putting chains on my feet, and then my legs, and then handcuffs. Finally they put extra chains around my body. I couldn’t move. And I was so scared. I started crying. I could see in their faces that they were enjoying that moment.

They took me to a closed van. I could barely walk because I had chains on my legs. They took me to another place that was an ICE office or something like that. They started asking me more questions, like if I’m married (I’m not), if I have kids (I don’t). Then they put this paper in front of me and said, “Sign this.” It was a statement agreeing to my deportation. I told them no. I didn’t want to sign anything until I saw a lawyer. They responded, “Okay, so you want your case to be reviewed by a judge?” I said, “Yes, that’s what I want.” They were not happy about that, but after a couple of minutes they showed me another paper, and they said, “Okay, you’re going to go to court on this day at that time.” I thought that was it. I was going to present myself to that court.

But they took me to another place, and I stayed there for maybe four hours.

Then they took me to [redacted]. There was some kind of ICE office there. They took my fingerprints, they took my picture, and asked me a lot of questions. They asked for the name of my family members, which I did not share. Then they said “Get ready, we are taking you to [redacted],” which is a detention center. This center is mostly for men, so they have another area for women, in a type of mobile home. I spent three days there. But they moved me so many places in such a short time, that sometimes I didn’t even know where I was. I was so confused and so exhausted. I tried to sleep when I could, but that meant sleeping on the floor. My thoughts were racing and I was so scared that sleep was almost impossible. Before I got to the detention center, they gave me a burrito. It was the first food I’d had in 24 hours. I was so hungry.

In the mobile home, there was a capacity for 12 people, but every hour more and more people came. There ended up being around 18 or 20 girls in there, ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s. Nobody told us anything. We had no answers.

We had to sleep on the floor, next to the bathroom or wherever there was space. In the middle of the night they would wake some of us and take us to medical for tests, but we never knew why. There was nothing to do but wait. We mostly just waited, cried, and tried to comfort each other.

They gave us food in some boxes. The food was decent, but the problem was the water. We had to drink from the sink.

After three days, they called my name and told me I was going to [redacted], which was another detention center. It was a long drive. We left in the late afternoon. By the time we got there and I was assigned a new place it was 2 am. They took my clothes and gave me a uniform. At this place, they separate the women by uniform color: red, yellow, khaki, and green. Red and yellow were called the high levels. We were not allowed to talk to those girls. We were not able to make eye contact, and we were not able to sit with them. These were the same girls that we had been trying to comfort in our prior location, so it was very shocking to be separated like that. Many of them were mothers who were mourning their babies. Mentally, it was very damaging for everybody, because we didn’t understand what was going on.

I don’t know how they decided who got which color, but I’m pretty sure it was random. They don’t review the cases to verify if anyone should be at a high threat level. I think it’s just that they have to put someone at the high levels because they are over capacity. But those ladies did not know why they were being treated like they were dangerous. It was very damaging for them. I saw their faces. It was so confusing. I knew many of their stories from when we’d been together in the mobile home and none of it made sense. It was just very, very sad.

After that, they finally got me to this very tiny room with a bunk bed. There was a tiny toilet, and next to it, there was a tiny sink. And again, that was the only access that we had to water. If you were thirsty, you had to drink from the sink that was next to your toilet. It was hot water and had a terrible taste, and you had to drink with your hands, because they don’t even give you a cup. A cup was a privilege that your family had to provide funds for you to buy, which was not possible for most of us.

The food situation was terrible. We understand we are not in a five star hotel. But there is some point when you feel like,“What is this?” Sometimes when they put the food in front of us, we didn’t even know what it was. It doesn’t have a shape or a color or anything so that you can identify what you’re eating. It was just devastating. I remember the first time I had to go to the dining room and they put that in front of me. I was crying. I wasn’t able to eat it because that thing smelled so bad and tasted even worse. I thought, “Why? What did I do to deserve this?”

Every day bus after bus full of people would come. Each tiny room has capacity of two people, but they would put another woman on the floor or under the bed so they can fit more and more people.

They would wake us up at 3:00 a.m. for breakfast. We were so exhausted that sometimes we didn’t have the energy to go. The ones that did go told us we weren’t missing anything, because it was so bad. Lunch was around 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. Same thing. It was terrible food, every day. There was no variation. And then dinner was around 3 pm. That was the last meal that we had in the day. So if you get hungry again, you have to ask your family to send money to your account so you can order a snack or something. Again, it is very sad, because not everyone has that kind of access or privilege. And even if you did, you could only get cookies, or maybe a bag of chips. It was not something healthy, but at least it was something.

There were some days where I would say, “I can’t, I just can’t, this is so terrible and cold and nasty that I cannot eat.” But after a couple days, you get to the point of starvation. Then you feel like, “I have to eat or I’m gonna get sick.”

I ended up in the emergency room because the water and the food was so bad. I was on the floor in very deep pain. My stomach was so big and it was so bloated that they finally sent me to the emergency room. But they just gave me milk of magnesia, or something like that. And they never checked on me again. They told me to just drink more water. Well, the water is the problem! How am I supposed to get better if I don’t have access to good water?

About a week after I was in the emergency room, they got me up in the middle of the night. They said, “You have to go to medical.” I thought maybe it was like a follow up. But no, they wanted to do some blood tests. When I got there they said, “You can refuse to have those blood tests.” But I thought maybe it was good for me to have a blood test done to know if there is something wrong. So I agreed and guess what happened? I don’t know if they were students and they were practicing or what but they weren’t able to find my vein. They just pinched me and they started moving the needle around under my skin. And I said, ”Please stop. Please stop!” He asked to try again and I gave him another chance. But he was just poking and poking me and moving the needle around while it was in my arm. I said “Please, please stop! That hurts so much.” They brought in another person. Same thing. They just hurt me so badly that I told her, “Please stop. You don’t know what you’re doing. Please stop. You are hurting me so bad, so bad.” She said, “Let me bring another person.” I was like, “No, no, please, no. You need to stop.”

The next day, I woke up with big bruises all over the place. So I said to them, I don’t want this anymore. I want to refuse that. They said, like, Oh no, it’s okay. Maybe later we’ll call a professional. So two or three days later, they called me to medical again, and they said, “We have a very good nurse over here and she wants to try to do it because we really want your blood.” And I said, “No.” But they convinced me again. It was the same thing. Oh, my God. I was crying. It felt like a nightmare. I didn’t want them to touch me ever again. I’m not a laboratory rat.

They never told me why they were doing these blood draws. I could not understand what was going on there. I was not the only one. A lot of girls had bruises all over their body because they were just practicing with us. And they were just hurting us all the time. I finally signed a paper refusing all of this. I was not falling for it anymore.

I was in this detention center for around 40 days. There were about 250 girls in each building. The buildings had different extremes with the temperature. In one of the buildings the AC broke, and they had to stay there day and night without AC in 112 degree weather. Those girls got very sick because they were so hot all day long with no access to cold water. They got dehydrated.

I was at the other extreme, where I felt like I was literally sleeping in a freezer. It was so cold that my lips got blue. I had a fever for five days and had blisters all over my mouth. We all got sick because we were so cold at night, and we didn’t have enough clothes and we didn’t have enough blankets. Then they said, “Oh, you guys have to be in quarantine, because we don’t want anybody else to get sick.” So they didn’t let us go to the dining room or to the yard or talk with anyone for four days. We were locked down. We can’t even go outside and feel the fresh air. Nothing. Some of the girls there were losing their minds.

That’s another issue over there. You have to be very strong mentally and spiritually to be able to overcome that situation. But some girls cry day and night because they miss their children. They miss their husband and their homes. They are just desperate. And you know what happened? If they see you crying, they take you to a room where they take off all your clothes. They put you in a gown that is for the mentally ill. And you have to stay there until you stop crying and showing emotions. You cannot show emotions or cry or anything like that, because otherwise you go to this room where they treat you like you’re crazy. So after all those days alone, some of those girls literally get crazy. I don’t know what they do to them. I don’t know how they treat them. I don’t know. I never went to that room. But after that experience, you see them walking around like zombies. They don’t talk with anyone. Their eyes are empty.

The wardens are very mean. They scream at you all the time. I’m not saying that everyone is bad. Some of them are just doing their jobs. But some of them are very racist, and they scream at you and shout in your face. It’s even worse if you don’t speak English because the wardens will give instructions in English and punish you if you don’t understand. Some of the girls are brave enough to say something. They said, “Why are you treating me like that? Why are you saying this to me?” But when this happened, they would put in The Hole. It’s an isolation room, where you can’t talk to anybody, and you stay there until they decide you can come out. The only thing that you are able to eat is bread and a little cup of water. This also breaks people.

I heard a lot of emotional stories in the detention center. The women there are mostly single mothers. They were just working. They were just living a normal life. And they get caught out of nowhere, some of them. One of the women there got detained bringing her little girls to kindergarten, and her daughters witnessed that. So that woman was crying every day. Another one called the police because she and her baby were being abused by her husband. When they found out that she was an immigrant and the husband was a US citizen, they gave the baby to the husband, and they brought her to ICE. That woman was crying day and night, because now her baby is with that abuser only because he is a US citizen. Since she’s not, she is the one in jail.

When you go to court, they send papers with you that list your charges. All the women were given these papers but they were all in English and in my building, I was the only one to speak English. Many of these papers included charges that were not true. In my papers there were claims that I had come back and forth into the country illegally, which was not true. Other women had charges that said they were in possession of drugs or were prostitutes. The women were asked, “Do you accept your charges as written?” Since the women did not speak English and did not understand what was included in their papers, they just said “Yes.” It was insane.

I started translating papers for the women so they knew what they were being charged with. I helped them make legal arguments, because nobody could afford a lawyer. I helped them fight for their rights.

These stories need to be heard. I promised the women I was with that I will not remain quiet, I will do whatever I have to do. We are human beings. We are not criminals. We are not the enemy. This administration promised to go after criminals and drug dealers. But they are targeting people in the workplace doing good things. They don’t care if you are a legal U.S. resident or even a citizen. They are targeting us for our skin color or the way we talk. I was there with women who were legal residents for 30 years but were detained for a traffic ticket in their past. They are trying to deport those people that are working to immigrate the legal way. One of the other girls was about to have her last interview for residency, and ICE was waiting for her. So this is not about doing things the right way anymore. I understand we have to do things the right way. But America hasn’t given us a way.

We are talking about people that have been working and contributing to this country for many years. We immigrants work the land with tears and sweat. We build houses, we build hospitals. We take care of the children, the elders, and now they’re paying us with hate and jail. We have to say something.