This week the Secretary of Homeland Security and the woman responsible for caging children and separating families by the thousands got axed from her job, leaving the president an opening to get someone “tougher” on immigration.
Yet even as the administration has sought to clamp down on migrants attempting to cross instead of welcoming them as asylum seekers, many families have gotten through. They immediately join a backlog of cases that must go before an immigration judge, a process that often takes years to slog through.
Inside a small back-house in South Central, one family of five from Guatemala lives and waits, after surviving the dangerous journey through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.
The small room is filled with toy cars, paperwork, and the sounds of a six-month-old baby named Froylan. Two twin beds placed along two of the four yellow painted walls is where this family has called home for the past four months while waiting to fight their asylum case.
On top of the purple blanket, spread across one of the beds, sits 20-year-old mother Charol Ramos as she cradles baby Froylan. His father, José Luis, sits next to his spouse as he watches their other son, Dilan, play with his toys. The four-year-old digs through his box of toy cars to find his miniature red fire truck. Three feet away, on the other bed, sits 17-year-old Icis – Charol's sister – as she grabs a small bottle of black nail polish.