Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story, where we go beyond the headlines of the day to bring you one big story.
Chapter 2: What are the impacts of the Trump administration's immigration policies?
The Trump administration's immigration policies have upended daily life for undocumented immigrants across the country. Some have self-deported. Others have gone into hiding, afraid to leave their homes. Many are still torn about what makes sense for their families in the face of an uncertain future.
Over the past year, NPR's immigration correspondent, Jasmine Garst, has been following the ups and downs of some of the people navigating this moment.
Chapter 3: How are families coping with the fear of ICE enforcement?
She sat down with host B.A. Parker on the Code Switch podcast to talk about her reporting, and we wanted to share some of it with you. We start with Jasmine's story of a Maryland mom who's taking unusual steps to keep her kids safe.
My mom tell me it's going to be okay. I worry too something will happen to her. Like something will get her.
Chapter 4: What unusual steps are immigrant families taking to protect their children?
We'll be right back.
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We're back with the Sunday story and an episode about the difficult choices facing undocumented migrants and their families. Here's NPR's immigration reporter, Jasmine Garst.
The kids say this summer was the summer of nothing, that it was boring as hell.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do undocumented families face during the summer?
Nothing happened, nothing at all. We didn't go anywhere. One mother in Maryland told me she quietly lost her mind this summer.
We spent it locked down, she says.
We didn't go out. The weather was bad the day I drove down there to the southern part of the state where rivers and creeks crisscrossed the land. It was late August, hurricane season, and Tropical Storm Erin had led to coastal flooding warnings up and down the Mid-Atlantic. I kept kind of eyeing the water nervously every time I crossed a bridge.
I was going to check in with a family I wrote about earlier this year for a story about self-deportation. Now, self-deportation is one of the centerpieces of the Trump administration's immigration policy. The message from the government has been, take your kids with you. They can always come back as adults.
But back when we first met, last winter, this mother in Maryland told me very firmly she would under no circumstances self-deport with her children.
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Chapter 6: How does self-deportation affect family dynamics?
My children were born here, she says. They are American citizens. This mother asks that I refer to her as Em. Em and her husband live in a pretty rural area of Maryland, and they are both from Guatemala. They're also both undocumented. Em's husband desperately wants to self-support.
He is really out there in the world every day working as a landscaper, and he's quite worried about being detained and taken to a detention center. And he says she just doesn't understand that it's not the same for her. She works from home making pinatas and party favors for quinceaƱeras, weddings, birthdays. The couple fights about this constantly.
The kids see it, and it gives them bad anxiety. Back in the winter, when we first met, her youngest daughter, her 7-year-old, first initial L, had a cold. She kept having to be sent home from school. The real reason was because she was having panic attacks.
I feel frustrated sometimes. I was just feeling sad. My mom told me it was going to be okay. I worry that something will happen to her, like something will get her.
After we met that one time, Em and I stayed in touch. She would send me WhatsApp messages almost every day, you know, pictures of her pinatas and stuff your tia sends you on WhatsApp, you know, a daily blessing, softly lit images of flowers or kittens or kittens inside flowers with some motivational quote. And I'd ask about the kids. How is everyone doing? Has the family made any decisions?
And then, around the beginning of summer, radio silence. After a few weeks of not hearing anything from Em, I reached out. I could tell my messages hadn't even gone through. I started to wonder if maybe Em or her husband got arrested, deported, or maybe they finally agreed to leave, to self-deport.
It was strange that I hadn't heard from her, but this has sort of become a constant in my life as an immigration reporter. For the last few months, on a regular basis, I will have an extraordinarily intimate conversation with a complete stranger. Or someone will find my phone number and call me from inside a detention center, and they will tell me their worst fear, their desperation.
They will ask me what I know as if I know. And then that person will just vanish. It's like my WhatsApp is filled with ghosts. So yeah, over the summer, when I stopped hearing from them, I decided to go check in on this family. As I drove to Southern Maryland in the storm, I was really unsure of what I was going to find. But as I approached the driveway...
Someone drew the curtain and these four faces, like, pressed up against the window. And it was Em and the kids. And they immediately bolted out, smiling and running to say hello. Even though she was wearing not platform shoes. She was wearing wedges, which was kind of hilarious. Because people running and jogging in heels is very funny to me. Just happy to see you.
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Chapter 7: What is the process of emergency guardianship for immigrant families?
If we take you to the aquarium, to the pool, we could get detained. We could get deported. Without looking at her mom, Kay says she's excited about school starting again. But I was filled with questions like, what if immigration agents come for me while my kids are in school or as I'm picking them up? And can immigration agents go into the school? Can they ask my kids about our legal status?
I heard concerns like this from a lot of parents. Oh, can they? I actually reached out to Elora McCurdy to ask about this. She's a professor of law at Columbia Law School and also the director of the Immigration Rights Clinic at the school. And what did McCurdy say?
There are no confirmed reports of ICE raids or ICE enforcement inside of schools.
McCurdy says she understands the fear, though, because almost as soon as President Trump took office in January, these previously designated locations like schools and churches and hospitals were deemed no longer off limits for immigration enforcement. But she clarifies that agents, and this is really important, agents need a warrant to go into a school.
Parents and children cannot be asked about their immigration status by the school. However, just a few weeks ago in Chicago, a teacher, you might have seen this, Parker, was chased by armed immigration officers into the preschool she works at. DHS said they weren't targeting the school itself, but you can see how the lines for many parents and students feel blurry. So back to Em.
Her kids started school in the fall, like kids all over the country. And then, a few days later, I got this audio message from her. She had a phone again.
She's standing about a block away from the school bus stop.
The sheriff's department is there. She has to pick the kids up, but she's scared.
About an hour later, I got another out-of-breath message.
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Chapter 8: How do immigrant parents prepare for potential deportation?
I froze, she says.
She grabbed the kids and they ran back home. It's okay now, she repeats. It's okay. Nothing happened. And then she laughs and says, I got as cold as a cucumber, though. That first week of school, Emsa, she did what a lot of parents across America did. She caught up on her sleep. And then she did something a lot of parents never consider doing.
She reached out to a friend who is an American citizen and started the paperwork to give emergency guardianship in case she or her husband get picked up by ICE.
When we come back, host B.A. Parker talks to Jasmine about the process of emergency guardianship and what it means for families either giving up or taking over the responsibilities of parenting.
Support for NPR and the following message come from the estate of Joan B. Kroc. whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help NPR be the model for high-quality journalism in the 21st century.
We're back with a Sunday story and a conversation between Cold Switch host B.A. Parker and NPR's Jasmine Garst about emergency guardianship.
Okay, Jasmine, can you talk to us about what emergency guardianship looks like?
I mean, to me, it seems like an impossible place to be in. Like you're caught between wanting to be with your kids and wanting what's best for your kids, but also knowing that you might have to leave them behind if you're targeted by immigration enforcement, you know?
Yeah, it's a rock and a hard place for many, many families. You know, the parents I spoke to who did this process of giving someone else emergency guardianship power told me it did make them feel some sort of security, like a sense of control in a world that they feel has gone out of control. Yeah.
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