Inside ICE: From Arrest to the “Icebox” Part 1

That April 25 in Great Barrington is something I will never forget. It dawned like so many other mornings in the Berkshires, with a lazy sun that never quite managed to fully break through the rain-heavy clouds. It was part of that routine one learns to respect, because around here the only thing truly reliable is how unpredictable the weather is. I woke up early. Without ceremony and without omens. Just the rush of a mother who has to work and the familiar thought as I got dressed: “I have to show up, I have to make it, I have to clean houses and then, with God’s grace, return to my own to be with my children.”That day, I was more than wrong… or perhaps God had other plans.

“Are you at home?” the social worker said.

I had breakfast “as usual”: McDonald’s. It’s that fast-food taste that isn’t luxurious, but in some way it feels like normality, and that was enough while the hot two-dollar coffee did its work. I was a woman who had been doing the same job for three years since leaving Honduras, moving from one house to another in Great Barrington: huge houses like in the movies, stairs, vacuum cleaners, other people’s bathrooms, spotless beds for people who don’t know your story.

I won't lie... I knew it was wrong to drive without a license. Although the fear of being arrested for overstaying my eight-month work visa always kept me from getting one. The fear of breaking the law was mixed with the need to get behind the wheel every day. It was a habit, I mean, but I didn't feel like a criminal: I felt like a mother. I felt like someone trying to support my two children who had crossed the border with a coyote in search of their mother after a year of being separated from her.

The first indication that it wouldn't be a normal day, that the day would take a dark turn, was a phone call while I was mopping the floor of a house in Stockbridge. It was the voice of a social worker.

—Are you home?

I told her no, with the broom lying unconscious on the floor as the only witness. And in that instant, I felt that pang in my stomach that only mothers understand: something happened to my children, I understood. I left the house half-finished, apologized, and left.

I arrived home. The social worker checked, investigated, observed. I tried to explain what working mothers always explain: that you do what you can to raise your children in the best way possible, that everything you do is for your children's well-being . She listened. She left. And for a moment, just for a moment when she said, "Thank you, Carolina," I thought that would be the end of it, but that same afternoon the police came for me.

"I didn’t know what was happening; I truly didn’t have a version of myself ready for the chapter that was about to be written"

I can't accurately describe what it feels like to see uniforms at the door when you've never experienced anything like it. It feels like reality is struggling to make sense in your mind. And I had just argued with my sixteen-year-old daughter, I tried to tell them. I didn't know what was happening; I didn't really have a version of myself ready for that chapter that was about to be written. "Here in this country, that's not how things are done," they told me through a translator on their phone, even though the disdain was coming from them. I was a woman who didn't know if speaking out was a way to defend myself or to sink even deeper.

They told me they had an arrest warrant. When we arrived at the Great Barrington station, the one I'd seen so many times before, tiny with its blue sign, a monotonous part of the Main Street skyline , they continued speaking to me in English. Then they put the phone back on the translator, as if my entire dignity could fit in a speaker . I heard words that clung to the air like smoke: bail, five thousand dollars, judge, freedom, wait.

First they said I'd be out in two hours. Then a Hispanic police officer appeared, someone who should have been a lifesaver (I naively thought), but he was the one who calmly threw me into the abyss. I have no doubt he was the one who called ICE.

He changed the number. He said five hours. My acquaintances had already gathered the money, the five thousand; they had collected it among their acquaintances to get me out, just as I had collected it to get another colleague out in the past. They put it together with hands that don't ask questions and hearts that hurry. From my cell, I repeated to the policeman what the others had told me: "They told me two hours." And he, without raising his voice, with that calm of someone who knows he's under control, used to contradicting detainees at the police station, uttered the phrase that left me breathless:

—When you get out… ICE will probably already be waiting for you outside.

I felt like the world was getting smaller than the size of that cell.

"Who?" I asked, incredulous.

And he said it as if he were naming the rain of that day:

—ICE.

I'd been hearing stories since January. The conversations in the community, the rumors that turned out not to be rumors, the strange silences in the hallways, the WhatsApp messages, people who stopped going to certain places; the doctor, school... But it's one thing to know the devil exists and another to know he's waiting for you outside on the sidewalk.

“I didn’t run because they told me that if I ran, it would be worse.”

When she told me, “It’s because you’re undocumented,” it wasn’t just a word. It was an arrow that ricocheted off the wall of my dignity, but the label, once uttered, stuck to my forehead. Undocumented. As if everything I had been in that country—worker, mother, caregiver—was erased in an instant with those six letters.

The clock read eleven-thirty, though I no longer trusted even time. The night was cold, but more because of what they were doing to me than the weather. Outside the station, the headlights of some trucks pierced the darkness. And there, on the street, I came out with the person who had brought the money, with some police officers speaking English as our only witnesses. One of them signaled us to run, moving his hand twice forward in a discreet, swift choreography of his wrists. I didn't see how the friend who came for me disappeared from my side without me noticing. Then I saw him far away. I didn't run because they told me that if I did, it would be worse. "You, don't run!" they shouted. And I stayed because I was thinking about my children—a big mistake, I soon realized.

The questions started. The address of the person who had escaped. My children's school, their names. I remained silent as they handcuffed me, my hands and feet bound . I didn't say yes. I didn't say no. I said nothing because I knew my silence was a wall. A mother may not know English, may not be able to read or write, may not know the law, may not know how the system works… but she knows when her family and friends are being hunted in the mental map.

They put me in a van. I wasn't alone: there were two other girls, and one of them gave me a signal when the questions started again: no. The ride lasted about two and a half hours. Two hours and a bit more feeling the metal in my hands and feet as if I were the most dangerous person in Massachusetts, with an empty stomach and my mind exploding with images because I lived alone with my children: school, the rent, the phone I couldn't use for fear they'd use it against them, who's coming for them?, what now?

The building we arrived at struck me with a feeling: emptiness. It was as if the building had no soul, as if it were a factory for breaking people; those people who arrived in handcuffs like me, whom I saw as I got out. They took my picture. They took my fingerprints. They searched me.

They made me take off my shoes, my pants, my blouse. They were men's hands. They told me to take off my bra. I obeyed because in those places, obedience isn't a choice. The shame wasn't a feeling; it was those eyes seeing me naked. And then I turned around and saw for the first time, while I rested my arms against a glass panel during the search, what still haunts my nights: more than seventy men crammed into a cold room: the icebox.

They were piled up, one on top of the other, wrapped in aluminum foil like food stored in a refrigerator. The word sounds funny if you don't know what it means. But the "icebox" is no joke. It's a kind of punishment, a form of torment and torture for migrants, a nightmare disguised as a procedure.

I thought: if they're like this... what awaits me? without taking my hands off the glass.

“More than seventy men packed into a cold room: the icebox”