Detroit (AP)-a woman from Guatemala says that she and her two children, born in the United States, were held for nearly a week by customs agents in Detroit after the instructions of the phone app to the nearest Costco brought them to an international bridge connecting the city with Canada.
She is now facing the removal proceedings in June in the Immigration Court, according to Ruby Robinson, a senior manager of a lawyer at the Michigan Immigrant Center.
On Thursday, Robinson, US reporter Rashida Tlija and Aklu, called for more reporting and transparency than US customs and border protection in the northern border of the country with Canada.
“Our neighbors and families should not disappear because they made the wrong turn,” said Vloy.
Although the northern border sees many fewer meetings with migrants than the US-Mexico border, a woman’s case is not uncommon, according to Tlaib.
Democrat from Michigan said that on March 21, he said on March 21, CBP that about 213 people had been detained in the same place since January, with more than 90% incorrectly driving on the plastic plaza on the bridge. Tlaib also said she was told that 12 families were detained in the same building where Robinson’s client was held.
“We don’t know exactly what’s going on. There is no transparency,” she said, adding that such detainees are probably found elsewhere at the northern border of 5.525 miles (8 891 kilometers).
But customs and border defense said agents were confronted with just over 200 under -schools from January 20 to March 21 at the intersections of Detroit. About half were detained and handed to ice after the secondary processing was completed, according to a CBP spokesman.
The Michigan Immigrant Center represents the woman in Guatemala. Robinson declined to release her name or age, confirming only that she was in the United States for about six years, but has no legal status. Her daughters, aged 5 and 1, were born in the United States, which their father lives in Detroit.
She lives in the southwestern Detroit, a neighborhood with a large Spanish population that sits in the shadow of the ambassador’s bridge and right across the Detroit River from Windsor, Ontario.
On March 8, her wife and daughters were in a vehicle driven by her 19-year-old brother. She uses a phone app to find the closest Costco and did not realize that the closest store is on the Canadian side of the bridge, Robinson said during a call to increase with reporters.
They boarded the cry of the bridge, but did not pass the booths for tolls. They were stopped by CBP agents and taken to a nearby building where it was questioned and printed. She also signed a form stating that she had entered the United States illegally.
She told the agents told her that she would be deported and encouraged her to take her daughters with her back in Guatemala, according to Robinson.
They were kept small, without windows, slept on children’s beds and giving microwave foods such as shoulder noodles and oatmeal. They were only allowed to leave the room to use the toilet and shower, she said.
By Monday evening, March 10, her smallest daughter began to develop a fever. The woman told her agents told her they had no medication for the child. The bigger daughter would soon go down with a cough.
As he went to the toilet that Tuesday, the family finally saw his brother in a corridor. The woman said she was in shackles. Her brother also does not have legal status in the United States and works as a roof with her children’s father, she said.
On Wednesday night, the girls were handed over to the woman’s daughter -in -law. She was released the next day.
“When people violate the laws of immigration, their choice makes them subordinate to detention and elimination,” Hilton Beckham’s CBP Commissioner, CBP, said in a statement of CBP. “She admitted that she illegally enters the United States in 2018. CBP policy works to find a suitable guardian for her children in the United States. However, she initially chose to hold them with her, extending the detention period. After the children were accommodated with a guardian, she was transferred to ice.”
Similar detainees are part of a model where short -term facilities are used long -term by CBP, said Tlaib, who serves the US House Supervision Committee.
“The erosion of the proper process is a threat to all of us – no matter your name, no matter the immigration status,” said Vloy. “The wrong turn should not lead to the disappearance and erosion of someone’s process.”