Have your tissues and fists of rage at the ready for this one. Also, trigger warning (suicide).
CNN has the full story:
He tried for years to join his 13-year-old daughter in the US. Now they're finally reunited -- at her deathbed
Manuel Gàmez is a Honduran citizen. Four years ago, after his father was murdered by MS-13 gang members for refusing to pay extortion, Gàmez made the decision to send his 9 year old daughter, Heydi, to live with his sister here in the United States. Heydi was granted asylum in 2016.
Gàmez himself has come to the US several times since then, was twice detained and sent back. The third time he tried to enter was last month. The first time he entered, ICE determined his claim for asylum was “not credible” (which is interesting, given that his daughter and sister were granted asylum). The second time he was caught he was convicted of illegal entry into the US and deported again.
With his third detention, his daughter Heydi, now 13 years old, despaired of her father being able to ever join her in the United States and sank into a deep depression.
Heydi lamented to her aunts that, unlike her classmates, she did not have a father or a mother to visit her school. In December, she tried to cut her wrist at school and was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, Jessica Gámez says. Heydi also was seeing a therapist until about two months ago, she says.
Jessica Gámez, 32, says Heydi even talked about returning to Honduras to be with her father. The girl said her "life had no meaning" without him.
"I feel I didn't take proper care of her. Like I failed her in some way," says Jessica Gámez, who lived with Heydi at her home in Bay Shore, New York, about an hour and a half east of New York City.
"I was suppose to be protecting her," she says. "I would never send her to Honduras. But I never thought something bad would happen to her here."
One night in early July, Heydi broke down in tears to Zoila and said she no longer believed the stories about being reunited with her father. She talked about becoming a lawyer to help him win his freedom.
Heydi then said she wanted to be alone. Two hours later, Zoila Gámez discovered her niece had gone into a closet and tried to take her own life. She did not leave a note, relatives say.
One week later, doctors at Cohen Children's Medical Center in Queens declared Heydi brain dead.
Manuel Gàmez, who was still being held by ICE, was granted a 14-day humanitarian parole to be at his daughter’s side and with the rest of the family here in the US when they took her off life support. He is to report back to ICE facilities by July 27th to face deportation.
I can’t think of much else to say here other than I feel like the Trump Administration is as responsible for this young woman’s death as if they had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. A family is now permanently separated, and it does not sound like Gàmez is being given any consideration for his pain or that his asylum claim is being given any further consideration. He’ll be sent back (just like the Trumplings chant), and who knows what will become of him. His father was murdered already, how much danger might he be in? Do they care?
I don’t have a lot of words left right now. I work for a school district with a growing Hispanic population. I don’t ask, nor do I care, what their immigration status is. They are all children, they are all my students. The photo of Heydi in the CNN story is like that of any other young teen, she could be easily be one of my students.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t care about what happens to other people, because stories like this actually hurt, almost a physical pain, and I can’t help thinking about what might have been if only our policies were more compassionate. I don’t doubt that Heydi probably was exposed to all the anti-immigrant “Build the Wall” rhetoric, that she knew our own President likened people like her to criminals and undesirables. Adolescents are already very vulnerable as they try to find their footing in the world as they grow into adulthood, I can only imagine how the words and actions of our President and his supporters factored into her despair and ultimate decision to take her own life.
We can be better than this. We must be better than this.
Edit: Realized I forgot to add the link to the CNN story. Fixed.