The suffering and enormous confusion experienced by children when they are separated from their parents due to the detention or deportation of one of them from the United States were the inspiration for the activist Ángeles Maldonado to write the children’s book “ Where is daddy?”
“The immigration issue is something very complicated and many times those most affected by immigration policies are children,” Maldonado, who has a doctorate in education, told Efe. and has done several studies on this matter.
The book is largely based on the true story of “Akemi”, a girl who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, whose father is an undocumented immigrant who was detained by immigration authorities when she was seven years old.
Maldonado, a well-known activist in Arizona, met the little girl 2018 as part of her investigative work. The minor told him how a simple traffic stop led to her father being arrested by the immigration services.
“I noticed that she did not understand why her father had been arrested, why he was detained, what had he done wrong”, recounted the writer.
The minor told him that the laws that separated her from her father simply “should not exist”, that they were “unfair”.
The story of the minor touched Maldonado’s heart, who suffered firsthand the arrest of her father during a raid in her workplace in Phoenix when she was a teenager.
“I remember those long hours of waiting outside the immigration office. I remember the determination of my mother, who assured us that we would not leave without our father. It was the first time I saw her like this”, she recalled.
She still remembers the fear that her father would be deported to Mexico after years of living and working in the United States. It is the same fear that immigrant children experience daily not only in the border area, but throughout the country.
Listening to the story of “Akemi” led Maldonado to look for a book focused on children who face this difficult process, but he found very little. For this reason, he decided to write “Where is Daddy?”, also based on the stories of more than a dozen children between the ages of 5 and 9 that he interviewed in recent years as part of his studies.
These interviews began after the now former US president Donald Trump (2017-2018) will implement its “zero tolerance” policy, separating parents from their children at the border.
They question having made them travel
“Many of these children expressed the same feelings to me, the same questions, something that I wanted to answer in some way in the book,” said Maldonado, originally from the Mexican state of Guanajuato.
Indicated that Some minors even ask themselves “Why did my parents bring me to the United States?”, something that she herself questioned.
“When I was a girl I wondered why they had brought me to this country if they don’t want us here Yo. It was not until I grew up, when I entered university, that I understood the great sacrifice my parents made to give me a better education, and now I am extremely proud of them”, she said.
This feeling It is what he wants to convey to the children who read the book, that they understand that their parents did “nothing wrong” when they came to the United States.
In the book, “Akemi” recounts her story and visits to her father in the detention center, as well as like her desire to “break” the walls that separated her from him, as if they were a “piñata”. Likewise, she confesses the pain she felt the day she celebrated her eighth birthday and her father was not with her.
The book was illustrated by the Latin artist Edward Dennis.
The activist considers it extremely important to highlight the impact that family separation has on children, something she sees every day in the office of her husband, immigration attorney Ray Ybarra Maldonado.
She has witnessed the migratory drama very closely, especially in Arizona, where he actively participated in protests against now former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who gained national fame for his operations against undocumented immigrants.
He also fought against the state SB law1070, approved in 2010, which granted the police forces state and local authorities the authority to inquire about the immigration status of detained persons, including for minor traffic violations.
Although ue Maldonado was fortunate that his father was released, “Akemi” did not have the same luck as his father was deported to Mexico.
Although the book does not tell about it, the drama of the minor continues since after her deportation the father tried to crossed the border irregularly to reunite with his family, but was arrested in the attempt and is now in a detention center again. The family expects a decision in her case next September
“They are still living this nightmare. It’s horrible to see how his life changed from one day to the next,” said Maldonado.
The book will be out next of August and part of the profits will go to a fund so that “Akemi” can pursue his higher studies.
To learn more about the book you can visit the site http://www.dondeestapapi.com /.