{"id":482837,"date":"2026-10-02T14:58:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:58:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/482837\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T14:58:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T14:58:13","slug":"after-a-year-of-ice-detention-struggles-linger-as-family-reunites-in-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/482837\/","title":{"rendered":"After a Year of ICE Detention, Struggles Linger as Family Reunites in San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

A steaming tray of hot taquitos arrived at the center of the table, as the family passed sides of rice and vegetables around while three small dogs yapped in the background. It was a typical night for Rosa, a single mother of three who lives in San Francisco<\/a>\u2019s Sunnydale neighborhood. But even the ordinary feels surreal right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This spring, Rosa, who is originally from Honduras, was released from an immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, and allowed to return to her children and modest apartment just north of the Cow Palace. She was locked up for nearly 11 months, leaving behind three daughters who were forced to look after themselves for almost a year. Rosa\u2019s release ranks her among the lucky few not deported, but the experience and its aftermath have left the close-knit family reeling.<\/p>\n

KQED is not using Rosa\u2019s last name because she fears it could hurt her pending visa application and because she is a domestic violence victim.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Family separation has become a hallmark of the Trump administration\u2019s approach to immigration enforcement, including in Northern California, where arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have surged<\/a>. Experts in youth well-being say it\u2019s had devastating impacts on children in the Bay Area and beyond.<\/p>\n

Approximately 400,000 immigrants were booked into ICE detention between Jan. 20, 2025, and April 9, 2026, and researchers estimate that approximately 205,000 children experienced the detention of a parent during that period, according to a Brookings Institution analysis<\/a>. The study found that most children whose parents have been detained are U.S. citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Rosa eats dinner with her family at their home in San Francisco on Aug. 27, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the adults caught in recent immigration enforcement are parents,\u201d said Kristina Lovato, an assistant professor in the School of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley who also directs the Center on Immigration and Child Welfare. \u201cForced family separation is traumatic. Not only is it sudden and involuntary, but it\u2019s often accompanied by uncertainty, whether a parent will return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigration enforcement under Trump has increasingly involved arrests away from the border. On June 2, 2025, ICE agents in unmarked vehicles arrested Rosa outside her apartment building.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just started screaming, \u2018let me call my daughter,\u2019\u201d Rosa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t know what happened for three hours. She saw me go outside, but never come back,\u201d Rosa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jenn, a bubbly college student pursuing a career in fashion, had just arrived home from a trip to Cabo San Lucas with friends for her birthday the day before her life turned upside down. She was sleeping in after the trip when suddenly her doorbell started ringing over and over.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She had help from a cousin who was like a brother, and whom Rosa had legal guardianship of when he was a child. But every day was still marked by uncertainty and unanswerable questions from her siblings about what would happen to their mother or themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the days she was most exhausted, Jenn said it felt easier to go hungry than try to put a meal together, whereas her mother had always made sure they had good food on the table. \u201cNobody wanted to cook. Nobody wanted to spend money going out to eat, either,\u201d Jenn said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While her mom was detained, Jenn\u2019s younger sibling, then 14, experienced a mental-health crisis and was diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The clinical psychologist who saw the teen wrote a letter in support of Rosa\u2019s release, saying the family separation was causing the child\u2019s condition to worsen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Rosa prepares dinner for her family at her home in San Francisco on Aug. 27, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cContinuity of caregiving with her mother is not a preference but a clinical necessity, as disruptions in caregiving or reliance on individuals without autism-specific understanding are likely to exacerbate anxiety, dysregulation and functional decline,\u201d the doctor wrote in September 2025, nearly seven months before Rosa was finally released.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ICE arrests more than quadrupled in the first year of the second Trump administration, according to UC Berkeley\u2019s Deportation Data Project<\/a>. During that time, experts tracking immigration enforcement actions say more people without any criminal background were detained, and releases from ICE facilities became increasingly rare.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe release rate, which was never that high, has gone way down,\u201d said David Hausman, assistant professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. Releases within 60 days of arrest went from around 35% under the Biden administration to about 7% in 2025, according to the Deportation Data Project, which Hausman co-directs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Immigration officials arrested Rosa under the pretense that she was a \u201cfugitive\u201d because she had returned to the country following a past removal in 2010.<\/p>\n

As a 15-year-old, Rosa escaped physical and sexual violence in Honduras. She came to the U.S. seeking safety, but was ultimately revictimized by an older man who groomed her and fathered two of her children. During their relationship, he forced her to assist him in illegal activity like shoplifting and drug sales. She was later convicted of both crimes, which led to her first deportation 16 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"\"Rosa\u2019s daughter holds a photo on her phone of her mother from when she was in detention at their San Francisco home on Aug. 27, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Her ex brought her back to the U.S. after only about two weeks. She was later deported a second time in October of the same year, and he brought her back within a month.<\/p>\n

Rosa escaped the relationship in 2014, and parented her three children in San Francisco for the next decade solo. She assisted local police in investigating crimes tied to her former criminal charges, and her cooperation, along with her recognized status as a trafficking victim, allowed her to vacate the convictions from her record. She has since been seeking a T visa, for victims of human trafficking, and U visa, for victims of other abuse crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the work to clear her record did not deter the immigration agents who arrested her last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was lots of back and forth, and the government argued she was a danger because of these arrests 15 years ago related to the trafficking,\u201d said Hayley Upshaw, an attorney with San Francisco\u2019s public defender\u2019s office who worked on Rosa\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

While she was detained in Washington, tragedy struck Rosa\u2019s family again. Her 28-year-old nephew, who had been helping her daughters in their mom\u2019s absence, died suddenly in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Rosa at her home in San Francisco on Aug. 27, 2026.\u00a0(Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Immediately afterward, the public defender\u2019s office worked with Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a Seattle-based organization that provides direct legal aid, to file a temporary restraining order and a habeas petition that legally challenged Rosa\u2019s detention. Nearly a month after her nephew\u2019s death, Rosa was released.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here now. But he is not here,\u201d Rosa said, fighting back tears.\u00a0\u201cThey let me come home because he passed away, you know. But they didn\u2019t let me come home because I deserved to come home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorneys and advocates working with Rosa say that her release was a rare reprieve from the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement and detention policies, but the trauma her family has endured persists across all cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTearing families apart deeply harms our communities. As in Rosa\u2019s case, it can mean that a mother can\u2019t pick up her children from school, children are put at risk of losing their homes, and their loved ones worry themselves sick,\u201d said Jennifer Friedman, managing attorney of the San Francisco Public Defender\u2019s Immigration Defense Unit. \u201cWhether a person was born in the U.S. or has had contact with the criminal legal system, it does not justify violating their civil and human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, did not respond to a request for comment about the impacts of family separation.<\/p>\n

But the threat of deportation, no longer abstract for the family, still looms over Rosa and her children. Now, she avoids some activities out of fear of exposing herself too much, like posting on social media or advertising where she\u2019ll be when she goes out to sell food during the day for income.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter this happened, I worry more than before,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I will always fight for my family and for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A steaming tray of hot taquitos arrived at the center of the table, as the family passed sides…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-482837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}