Although she’s actively fighting to stay in the United States, she fears that there may come a day when she has to choose between leaving her six U.S.-born children behind or bringing them to Senegal, where she would face pressure to submit her four daughters to the same ritual that disfigured her.
“I can’t even imagine how my children would live there,” Fatoumata said, whose last name is being withheld for confidentiality. “I want to stay here with my children and I hope that my husband can return. I need my husband and my children need their father.”
Fatoumata’s looming dilemma has already been faced by thousands of undocumented immigrants who were forced to choose between abandoning their children – but allowing them the opportunities that come with living in the United States – or tearing their kids away from the only country they’ve ever known and bringing them to a country filled with obstacles and struggles.
According to a recent study by the Department of Homeland Security, conducted at the request of Rep. Jose Serrano of the Bronx, 108,434 parents of U.S.-born children were deported from 1998 to 2007.
The pace of family separations could be accelerating. Since President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, over 387,000 undocumented immigrants have already been deported, in comparison to 237,000 just two years prior, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is unclear how many of those deportations separated undocumented immigrants from their citizen children.
But the presence of those children is growing. Jeff Passell, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, says that about three-quarters of children of undocumented immigrants are U.S.-born and that number continues to grow. Currently, there are over 4 million citizen children who are born to undocumented immigrants in the United States – a 1.3 million increase in the last seven years. The number of children who themselves immigrated illegally has held steady at 1.5 million.
According to The Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, composed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “1 in 10 children in the United States live in mixed status families – where one or more parent is a non-citizen and one or more child is a citizen,” meaning there are an estimated 3.1 million mixed status families.
“So many people came into the United States illegally, and now they are intertwined with citizen children or citizen spouses, and yet according to the law, they are still subject to deportation because of the way they entered the country,” says William A. Streppone, a New York immigration attorney. “That’s a major problem right now.”
As Fatoumata's case illustrates, even the risk of physical harm to a citizen-child who accompanies a deported parent may not stop immigration courts from throwing the parent out.
Like many other immigrants, Fatoumata entered the United States illegally over 15 years ago in search of a better life. She settled in New York City with her husband and soon gave birth to their six children. In 1996 her husband applied for political asylum by listing her for “derivative status” – a stipulation that helps protect spouses and children against persecution in their native countries. But his application was denied. Despite the rejection, Fatoumata’s family remained in the United States. Her husband was ordered deported at one point, but was never removed. He juggled two jobs in an effort to make ends meet, until July 20, 2007, when ICE came knocking on their door.
