After Arizona state troopers pulled her over in Tucson for driving under the speed limit, Yesenia begged to see her babies. The fear the migrant mother of four lived with — before and after fleeing the civil unraveling in her home country of Venezuela — didn’t prepare her for the pain of being separated from her children in the United States.
“I told them I had two other children,” Yesenia says in Spanish in a Feb. 15 video shared with Arizona Luminaria. In a sparse room in southern México, she speaks softly. Her little boy and girl are playing in the background.
The Venezuelan mother asked Border Patrol agents if she could go to her house, or if they would take her there for her other two children. The agents had her in handcuffs on the side of the road on the south side of Tucson.
“They said, ‘no,’” she says. They wouldn’t let her go to her other two children. “They said that wasn’t their problem. That was my problem.”
With agents standing guard, Yesenia watched over her 6-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy, thinking about their siblings, ages 8 and 14, at home with her sister-in-law.
The problem started that night, Feb. 11, at a QuikTrip gas station where Yesenia was selling empanadas.
She told Arizona Luminaria on Feb. 15 that a woman in the parking lot started “verbally attacking” her, threatening to call the police. She says minutes later the police showed up. She packed her things and her children into her SUV — already nearly full with the supplies she used to clean houses — and started driving away.
Moments later, Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers pulled her over.
The traffic ticket, for driving 25 mph in a 40 mph zone, reviewed by Arizona Luminaria stated she was driving at a speed that would “impede traffic.” The citation included additional violations for no insurance, a suspended license plate and not wearing seatbelts.
Yesenia says she gave an officer the ID she had received from a migrant shelter where she briefly stayed in Chicago.
She says the officer accused her of presenting a false ID. When she protested, she says he threatened she could face five years in prison. Shortly after, Border Patrol agents arrived.
“They handcuffed me in front of my children,” Yesenia says.
Neither her husband, her two other children, nor anyone else in Yesenia’s family or community knew anything more about what had happened to her or where she was. Finally, she called on Friday evening, Feb. 14, three days later.
Yesenia says she made the call from Villahermosa, the capital of the southern Mexican state of Tabasco, about 2,000 miles away.
She says she and her two children were deported early Wednesday morning. They were handed over to Mexican immigration officials in Nogales, Sonora, then, hours later were put on another bus — a ride that lasted two full days — until they finally arrived in Villahermosa.
Yesenia and her family are in shock.
“I’m scared, of course I’m scared. My children are terrified. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s so unjust,” Yesenia said in a Feb. 15 phone call with Arizona Luminaria.
Their deportation comes amidst a crackdown from the Trump administration, which is ramping up immigration arrests, using the military to attempt to stop border crossings, and encouraging local law enforcement to act as de facto border and immigration agents.
The administration also has shifted enforcement priorities that previously placed a greater focus on deporting people deemed a “threat to national security, border security, or public safety.” The current crackdown includes more migrants, like Yesenia, who have not been charged with serious crimes. They also are allowing immigration agents to target “sensitive locations,” such as hospitals, schools and churches, which was against the Biden administration’s guidelines.
“That’s not my problem”
“They asked if I was a member of the Tren de Aragua,” a Venezuelan gang, Yesenia says of Border Patrol agents interrogating her and her children the night they were in custody.
She says she told them repeatedly that she was scared to be sent back to Venezuela. She begged them not to deport her to México, where she had been targeted by a cartel.
“I lived through a kidnapping. I was scared to return to México,” she says. She continued pleas for her other two children still in Tucson.
She says that agents just kept saying, “That’s not my problem.”
At the Tucson sector Border Patrol station, agents questioned both her and her children. “They asked my 6-year-old daughter if her dad was a gang member, if he had a gun,” she says. Her daughter was sobbing.
“Imagine scaring a 6 year old like that,” Yesenia’s sister-in-law says. She asked not to be named for fear of repercussions from immigration or law enforcement officials.
Yesenia also says agents threatened to send her to Guantánamo, and that her kids could be put up for adoption.
“My son, 9 years old, was crying. He’s really sensitive. He kept trying to stop the agents from talking to his mom and sister like that, but they yelled at him to be quiet,” Yesenia says.
She says her son was trembling and crying. “He was screaming,” she says. “Please don’t separate me from my brothers.” She says agents told the boy to be quiet, that he couldn’t be screaming and crying.
Arizona Luminaria has repeatedly asked Border Patrol officials for comment about how Yesenia alleges she and her children were treated in custody. They did not immediately respond.
“They didn’t allow me any calls,” Yesenia says. “Not once did I get a call.” She says she asked agents repeatedly to call her family so she could check on her children.
When she arrived in México, she also asked Mexican immigration officials for permission to call her family and says they refused. She says, in a video shared with Arizona Luminaria, that Mexican officials warned her that the U.S. government issued an order banning her from calling anyone.
According to Yesenia, multiple family members, and Yesenia’s attorney, she and her family fled Venezuela after problems stemming from her husband’s time as a Marine for his home country.
“He saw things he wasn’t supposed to see, he was asked to do things he didn’t want to do,” Yesenia’s sister-in-law says. “And then they started coming after him.” She says that Yesenia’s husband fled first, and then, a year later, in 2023, when threats were being leveled at the family as well, Yesenia left the country with their four children.
They first went to Chicago, where they began their asylum case. They moved around a bit — to Texas and then finally Tucson — looking for work and community.
Yesenia’s sister-in-law says that the mother of four was trying to do everything right. “She changed her address with the court, and she showed up to court for her immigration hearing the day she was scheduled,” she says. But it was the wrong court. Somehow the venue change hadn’t gone through. That was when Yesenia was ordered deported in absentia.
Yesenia’s sister-in-law addressed Border Patrol agents questioning if her brother was a gang member.
“No,” she says, her voice choking up. “He’s a worker,” she says. “All he’s done since he came is work. He’s never had a fine, any problem.”
“He just works. Cleans houses, landscaping, construction, stucco, he’ll do anything, he knows how to do it all.”
She says Yesenia was the same. “All she’s done since she came here is take care of her kids, work, try to follow the rules,” the sister-in-law says.
But, she says, that wasn’t enough to keep her from getting caught up in the Trump administration’s deportation dragnet.
Church raises money
Saturday was youth day for the Bible study session at the Tucson church that Yesenia and her family regularly attended. Three young parishioners sat on the narrow stage leading a discussion about how to respond, in the Christian spirit, to unforeseen illness or calamity.
The church was decorated in roses and hearts for Valentine’s Day.
“You may face hardship and ask yourself, ‘Why me? Why my family?’” one parishioner says during the discussion. One of the youths on the stage urged patience, saying some things in life were impossible to understand.
Yesenia’s sister-in-law sat on a pew in the back with her 12-year-old son. Stepping outside into the crisp late-morning to talk about Yesenia, she speaks softly of the shock and concern she and her family have been living through since Tuesday night, four days ago.
The church is raising money, aiming for $500, to help Yesenia’s husband buy a bus ticket and meet her in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco. They haven’t decided yet what to do with the other children, but are thinking that they want to keep them all together.
Joanna Williams is the executive director of Kino Border Initiative, a migrant aid and advocacy organization based in Nogales. Williams said they were deeply concerned that a traffic stop by the Department of Public Safety could have ended in Yesenia’s transfer to immigration authorities.
“If DPS is involved in these kinds of arrests then there will be more families within Arizona that are impacted, more families separated, and more long-term residents of our communities who are torn away from their homes,” Williams said.
The sister-in-law says that the whole family is scared that Yesenia is back in México. Yesenia says she can’t stop thinking about when she was kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel. She can’t stop thinking about how she told agents she and her children weren’t safe there, that their repeated response was: “That’s not my problem.”
Yesenia says her daughter has hardly slept since they were first taken into custody. “Imagine all she’s going through,” Yesenia says.
She and her two kids may be able to remain a couple more nights where they’re staying — her church in Tucson worked their networks to find her temporary shelter.
“It’s not safe for us in México, obviously. What do we do?”
She says returning to Venezuela is also impossible.
As for what’s next, she breathes deep, and says, “Simply, I don’t know.”
Immigration enforcement in Arizona
State and local law enforcement agencies in Arizona, including the Department of Public Safety, are authorized to look up a person’s immigration status under the remaining provisions of Senate Bill 1070 — the so-called “show me your papers” law — that were not struck down by federal courts.
An informal opinion published by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in 2016 permits state and local departments to contact ICE or Customs and Border Protection — which oversees the Border Patrol — if they have “reasonable suspicion” the person they detain is in the country unlawfully. But it also states that officers cannot prolong a stop or arrest solely to verify immigration status.
Arizona Luminaria reached out to the Attorney General’s Office, which flipped from Republican to Democrat leadership in 2023, to ask if there was any updated guidance for law enforcement in Arizona to enforce SB 1070. A spokesperson for the office agreed to look into it, but was unable to confirm as of Friday afternoon.
Border Patrol also has statutory authority to enforce immigration laws within a 100-mile zone from the international border. Tucson is within that zone.
– Rafael Carranza
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