Earlier this year, days after Camila\u2019s dad didn\u2019t come home for dinner one night, the then-6-year-old had many questions for her father.<\/p>\n
Where are you? What are you eating for dinner? Can I come there to have dinner with you?<\/p>\n
Luis said his daughter, curious, bubbly and intelligent, is normally glued to his side. She follows him around their home in San Diego, joins him on trips to the store and asks him questions he says are far beyond her years.<\/p>\n
But this time, as Luis listened to his daughter\u2019s voice through a payphone inside an immigration detention center, tears welled in his eyes. He struggled to find the right words to explain to the first grader that he was arrested by immigration officials just as he was arriving to work one morning in February and that he didn\u2019t know when he would see her again.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in a little school right now, he told her. They gave me a lot of work, but once I finish, I\u2019ll come back home.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s note:<\/p>\n
inewsource is withholding some personal details of Camila and her family and not using their real names because they fear being identified and targeted by immigration authorities. We shield the identity of sources in rare instances and only when there is a compelling news interest and the story likely could not be told without taking these steps.<\/p>\n
More families across the country could soon face similar conversations as the Trump administration attempts to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history. While his predecessor focused arrests in the interior on those with serious or violent criminal histories, Trump officials have made clear that anyone in the U.S. unlawfully is a target.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The president has justified mass deportations as protecting the American people from the violence he says immigrants are perpetrating throughout the country. His supporters point to individual cases of people killed by immigrants in recent years as evidence of the problem.<\/p>\n
However, research<\/a> does not support a relationship between immigration and crime. Studies suggest immigrants actually commit violent crimes at a lower rate<\/a> than U.S.-born citizens. Reports indicate recent arrests have mostly targeted those without criminal records,<\/a> apart from immigration violations.<\/p>\n But some say there\u2019s a group of U.S. citizens at risk in the president\u2019s agenda: the children of parents living in the country without legal status. In San Diego County, there are more than 56,000 such kids, according to an estimate from the American Immigration Council, a research and advocacy group.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many could stand to be separated from a parent \u2013 or both \u2013 or their life in their home country, as parents facing deportation weigh whether to leave their kids in the U.S. or take the kids with them.\u00a0<\/p>\n The White House did not answer specific questions about how its immigration policy affects those children, but said anyone in the country unlawfully should \u201cimmediately self-deport.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIllegally entering the United States and having a child does not give aliens a free pass to violate federal immigration law without consequence,\u201d said Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, a Democrat whose congressional district includes parts of south San Diego and Chula Vista, said the situation violates the rights of American children, who should be able to remain with their parents in their home country.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt really is an incredible misuse of the law to create an incredible injustice,\u201d Vargas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both of Camila\u2019s parents, who are from Mexico, are without lawful status and said they have been in the U.S. for more than a decade. They\u2019ve worked as cleaners, car washers and trash collectors and have no existing criminal records apart from immigration violations. While Camila and her 11-year-old brother are U.S. citizens, their older sister \u2014 who came with their mother when she was 7 \u2014 is also without lawful status.<\/p>\n On those phone calls from the detention center after his arrest, Luis wanted Camila to know he was OK. He didn\u2019t want her to worry. He wanted her to be able to focus in school, to keep being a kid.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there was one question he couldn\u2019t answer that she asked in every call:\u00a0<\/p>\n When are you coming home?<\/p>\n Few options<\/p>\n When Luis came to San Diego in 2008, after crossing the border with the help of a smuggler, he didn\u2019t plan to stay. He wanted to save money to start a business back in Mexico and help support his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n A few years later, his now wife and oldest daughter joined him after crossing with a visa. Eventually, the couple had two children in the U.S. and decided to stay. While they know they\u2019re in the U.S. unlawfully, the couple said they\u2019ve worked hard to provide for their kids, stay out of trouble and pay their taxes, hoping one day they might be able to legalize their status.\u00a0<\/p>\n inewsource visited Luis\u2019 former workplace and spoke with a coworker who said he was there when Luis was arrested. We also spoke to a friend of Luis who is from San Diego, works at a local university and said he has known the family for more than a decade. inewsource ran the names of the parents through federal and state criminal court records, which did not yield results.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Camila\u2019s parents have lived in the U.S. without status through previous administrations, the scale of Trump\u2019s current crackdown could mean more parents like them are impacted, according to Nan Wu, director of research with the American Immigration Council. Around 4 million U.S. kids have at least one parent living here unlawfully, according to the group\u2019s estimate.<\/p>\n Trump rolled back a previous policy directing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to prioritize arrests of people with serious or violent criminal records. He rolled back another one preventing immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, health care centers and other \u201csensitive\u201d locations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Top officials including Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, and Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, are pushing for 3,000 immigration arrests daily across the country, which would triple figures<\/a> from earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n