In El Monte, CaliforniaA mother lives the nightmare of all parents – ICE Despite no criminal record, leaving his daughter, Xitlali, to fight bone cancer alone.
Yolanda, 50, and her son Johnathan were recently placed in police custody, leaving his daughter, Xitlali, 21, without caregiver.
“My, that’s fine. You didn’t do anything,” said Xitlali trying to comfort her mother. Captured on video, the heartbreaking moment has shown that ice agents Menota Yolanda, who, through tears, could only answer, “but they will take me.”
The agents would have refused to show a mandate despite family pleas. Then, without warning, they caught Johnathan.
“They pushed him into the car, and without questions, they caught him. They told him that he had the mandate, but he did not show it,” recalls Xitlali by local news.
Without a criminal record, Yolanda was Xitlali’s rescue buoy and provided essential care without her daughter could not live, family members said.
“When I take chemo, I feel very, very bad, I can’t do anything, I can’t even wake up properly, I’m half asleep. She helps me, she bathes me, she changes me, she makes my food,” explained Xitlali.
Johnathan had served time for a crime almost a decade, but his sister believes that he was unjustly targeted.
Yolanda, on the other hand, seems to be a “collateral detention” – a practice where ice holds individuals who happen to be present during application measures.
“There would be a possibility, if the ice grants a certain forgiveness which would allow the mother to fight her case in court instead of staying in detention, but which would be based on a humanitarian issue and will not guarantee that they would leave it in the country,” said family lawyer David Acalin.
With her mother and brother locked up in separate centers, Xitlali finds herself without the two people on which she most depends
“I have the impression that my life collapses,” she said.
Rather than abandoning, she channels her fight in online fundraising, determined to be reunited.
Ice has not yet provided a comment on the case.
(Tagstotranslate) California