There may not be anything more painful than a mother having to say goodbye to her child.
And yet that is the predicament that many mothers, including Carmen and Maria, are facing. After both women pleaded with immigration officials to be allowed to stay with their children, Maria was granted an extension but Carmen was ordered out of the country, CBS reports in the video above.
Carmen, who has lived in the US for 22 years, now has a monitoring brace on her ankle until her flight back to Peru in three weeks.
She and her 14-year-old son, Brian, made tearful pleas to Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) to allow her to stay. “I feel depressed, nervous, sometimes scared… I don’t want to lose her, I want to be next to her, step by step," Brian said.
Carmen has been detained for eight months after making two mistakes: running from ICE agents when they raided her home last year and then lying to them.
However, her attorneys argue that ICE should be focusing on criminals, not mothers. “What’s going to happen to this class of children that are staying behind to be taken care of by other family members and do not have their parents here to take care of them?” immigration attorney Jessica Dominguez said to CBS.
Maria, who has four children, including a son with special needs, was granted a one-year extension on her ordered deportation.
Click through photos of Carmen, Maria and their children pleading with ICE officials:
All photos by HuffPost Voces reporter Jorge Luis Macias
