MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Immigrant families pushed to leave the U.S. by the Trump administration have found themselves in difficult situations. Michigan Public's Beenish Ahmed reports on a family who returned to Venezuela just before disaster struck.
BEENISH AHMED, BYLINE: After being held in immigration detention for three months, Osmary Garcia agreed to a voluntary departure back to Venezuela. Her husband, Hector Marin, and their six kids would soon follow. Two weeks after they reunited, two massive earthquakes devastated the region they live in.
OSMARY GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
AHMED: "Everything was left unrecognizable," Garcia said in a voice memo. "The children are really traumatized from seeing so much ruin."
The family hasn't lived in Venezuela for nine years. The younger kids, ages 3 and 7, were born in Colombia and had never even been there. They all came to the U.S. through a Biden-era program for asylum seekers. The Trump administration ended that program. Garcia and Marin didn't know it, but the driver's licenses and work permits they had were no longer valid. When Garcia dropped the kids off at their elementary school one day last February, immigration officers arrested and detained her.
HECTOR MARIN: (Through interpreter) We were never afraid before. But after she was detained, then we were afraid to leave the house.
AHMED: Marin stopped going to work. The kids stopped going to school. Their savings ran out. Marin was at a loss for what to do until he remembered a flyer he saw in one of his kids' backpacks. It had information for Kristen Plonsky, who at the time worked for the Detroit School District and was helping immigrant families. As a health hub coordinator, Plonsky's job was to be a one-stop shop to connect families to everything from rental assistance to medical clinics. Then four Detroit students were detained by ICE in quick succession last fall.
KRISTEN PLONSKY: Since then, most of my job has been in some way related to the increased presence of immigration enforcement.
AHMED: But even with her help, Marin says they couldn't hunker down forever. And Garcia couldn't bear to stay in immigration detention while the overburdened court system made a decision on her asylum case. So they decided to give up their asylum claims and to leave the life they had built in Detroit. Plonsky helped the rest of the family navigate travel arrangements while they waited for travel permits to come through.
MARIN: (Through interpreter) We had to change the flights three times. She's the one that got them all changed. So she's been there, and we couldn't have done it without her.
AHMED: Plonsky says she doesn't think people who say things like, they should have come here legally, have any idea what the legal way is.
PLONSKY: There are so many different pathways. And even the people who are in those pathways and have done it the right way, like they're saying they should, are getting taken.
AHMED: The family, like many others voluntarily returning to their home countries, is also having a hard time getting the $2,600 stipends the Department of Homeland Security promised to anyone who self-deports. Plonsky is still helping the family collect that cash for each of the kids. Garcia says the stipends have become even more vital after last month's earthquakes.
GARCIA: (Speaking Spanish).
AHMED: "We left with the little that we had," Garcia said, "and even that's gone now."
For NPR News, I'm Beenish Ahmed in Detroit.
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