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04/06/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

A mother’s terror

Sometimes it’s a quiet day in my corner of the Immigration world. I am the only one there from our small group and I get a lot done. I had a list of things to do for a couple of my clients, as well as a list of intake voicemails to take care of. These calls are how we get our clients and it’s my job to return the calls, assess the situation, determine if it is a case we can take, and make a referral if it’s not. About one third of my time is devoted to the intake process. It’s how I meet people who are looking for help, or who are simply looking for some information and options. Many of these calls are from Spanish speaking people, so being fluent is a plus.

One day it was nearing time to leave, but there were two phone calls I still had to make. One was to a client of mine with the question that all of our clients eventually ask. To me, the biggest problem with our Immigration laws is the difficulty of getting a work authorization card. Most of our clients have to wait several years – and sometimes more – to be granted permission to work legally. At any given time our department is serving over 100 people. I’m going to say that 90% of them are ready, able, and willing to work. They have families to support, so most are working in our “underground” economy, doing jobs that US citizens don’t want to do.

My last phone call was in answer to a message that a very young sounding woman left. All she did was leave her phone number and ask for a call back. I didn’t know what her issue was because she didn’t leave any details. I called the number, and the reception was spotty at best, with a lot of background noise. I could barely hear what she was saying, but I did hear the panic in her voice. “I need help finding my children.”, was what I finally heard from her. It caught me off guard because that is not a request I have gotten before.

I asked her for more details. She said her sons had been dropped off at our Southern border and were to have been taken across by another family also coming to enter without permission. Apparently the children had crossed over near Nogales, Arizona. They had supposedly made the crossing last Tuesday and she had heard nothing from them since. Thinking these were probably teenagers I asked their ages. What she answered almost made me gasp. The boys are 12 and 8 years old. “I don’t know where they are”, she said, “they have my phone number but no one has called.” 

The area around Nogales leads into the Sonoran desert, one of the deadliest places to cross into. Temperatures soar well over 100 during the day and drop into the 50’s at night. There are no water stations except for those set up by a not for profit agency called No More Deaths. There are no phone booths available for calls to be made. In short, it is a deadly zone and hundreds, if not thousands, of immigrants have died in that desert. It is such a problem that there are agencies whose purpose is to find bodies, try to identify them, and then try to contact family members back home – wherever that may be.

This is the first thing that came to my mind, but the last thing that I would have said to the caller. I told her there was a possibility that the boys had been caught by the Border Patrol. Without knowing exactly what my next steps would be, I told her I would do a little research and call her back as soon as possible.

Since there was no one around, it was up to me to figure out my next steps. I started by calling the Southern border office of the CBP (Customs and Border Patrol). It took a while to be connected and the person gave me a familiar number – Immigration customer service. I know better than to call that number for this kind of help. Mr. Google and I found a more direct number to CBP. This time I was told that they were unable to release any information about minors, but I could call the ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) since they are the agency that gets minors crossing the border. I got the 800 number, and called it to see if there was a Spanish option, which there is. The message said they were experiencing a high volume of calls, so wait times were longer than usual.

The only thing I could do for this mother was to give her the ORR number. I told her she would have to wait a long time for an answer, but there was a Spanish option for her. I told her to keep calling until she got through. In my head, I know this is a long shot.

This was one of those calls that reminds me how broken our immigration system is, and how the most vulnerable, brave, people take their lives in their hands in search of “a better life…”  This mother won’t be a client of ours, but I am determined to call her when the office opens next. Hopefully by then she will have heard from her boys. Dear God.