What It's Like To Spend A Month In An Immigration Detention Center

In 2016, Ana Baires fled El Salvador with her 4-year-old daughter. They crossed into the U.S. From Mexico seeking asylum with four other mothers and their young kids — along with some unaccompanied children. Shortly soon after, they were all stopped by border agents and eventually taken to detention centers. All told, Ana and her daughter spent nearly a month detained; because this happened before the Trump administration's policy of separating families at the border split up over 2,000 migrant children from their parents, she remained with her daughter the whole time.


Their stay was marked by Ana's daughter's health problems, including asthma along with a fever, and also because the rigors of the facility: electrified fences, stark trailers, a general sense of uncertainty. "They attempt to prepare it not seem like a prison," Ana told MTV News, through the an interpreter, although it is a prison immediately considering that Below, 39-year-old Ana tells her story about what happened any time whenever she came to the U.S. And what's happened since. [This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.]


We crossed the river at 4 in the morning. Immediately after that, we walked for a hour. We had to cross three metal fences, and then we got to a road where we were noticed by border patrol. We were detained. The officers were asking us for our papers and where we were coming from, and then we were taken to [the first facility], which is sort of like the refrigerator or the icebox. We were put indoors a big room. They took our sweaters. They took our belongings.


Unfortunately, [my daughter] had a fever. I was attempting to tell the officers that my daughter was feeling really sick. She was just getting worse and worse, so I got close to a window and I instructed them officer that was outdoors, "Can you please help me? My daughter is really getting very sick." Yet the officers mentioned, "There's nothing I can do now. You should've thought about this before coming. And also you may as well have died on the way here."


[The detention center] is a big, big lot where clearly no one can leave. They have electric fences around the area and so they have trailers, which are the rooms where they had the families. Each trailer had six bunk beds for each mom with her kids.


We also had set times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that were between one hour and a hour plus 1/2, and that was the only time we might eat. If the kids couldn't make it at that time or were sleeping or they weren't famished at that time, they just had to wait up until the next meal. Some little kids would go to bed starved because they couldn't eat at dinner time. At night, it was really hard because they would turn down the lights at 8 p.M. There was nothing else to do. We had to go to bed at that time.


After we were released, we were sent to the second place of detention, which is sort of "the dog pound," where they have cages.


We were to be able to see a doctor then. Nevertheless they only gave [my daughter] Tylenol. And then once we went a couple days later to the detention center, they took the medicine away and so they instructed us that she was going to be able to see another doctor then, who would give her something else.


[Later] any time while they instructed us that we were gonna be released from detention, immediately after we passed our credible care interview, I was rather pleased. I thought that we were going have the ability to be free, and I had someone who — the person that had helped us to come to the nation was going to welcome us to their residence in North Carolina. However it was really hard. Even taking that step was really hard because we did not have any cash or any food. We just had enough to get on a bus to North Carolina, and yes it was a very long ride.


We did not have any medicine for my daughter aside from the spray that they had given her, so she was still feeling very bad from her asthma, and I had an ankle bracelet. [Editor's note: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) often uses GPS monitoring for people who have been detained and afterward released. An estimated 30,000 people were under electronic supervision in 2016.]


As soon as we got to that residence [in North Carolina], we had to stay there due to the ankle bracelet. The family member of the man that had helped us, they didn't like us. They would treat us bad, some days let's go without giving us food. Plus it was a really hard situation, up until my ankle bracelet was removed and we were finally able to move out of that house.


[Trump's policy of separating families] is one of the most cruel policies that I've ever seen as the children that are coming here with their families, aside from the already traumatic experience of coming here, separating them from their parents is even worse because for several of the children, that's the only thing that they have — their mom or their dad. They don't have anything else. Some children would actually think that their parents left them any time while they don't visualize them, if they don't have them close.


In the same way, as an example, in my case, I am very afraid of going back to El Salvador.


There were threats against my family member members, and they're just waiting for me to go back to kill me. Several folks are like me, in that same situation — coming here because they are afraid for their lives. I want people to know my story, that people like me come here looking for a possibility and not to take anything away from anyone, or to take anything by force.