Transcript of Family Separation 2.0: An Update

Hey, it's Michael. All this week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year, listening back and hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran. Today, we return to the subject of President Trump's broad and historic crackdown on immigration. To reach his promised deportation numbers, Trump increasingly sought to deport those without a criminal record, those who came to the US decades ago and who have established lives, careers, and family in this country. Daily producer, Jessica Cheung, told the story of one such man who was detained this year through the eyes of his daughter. It's Tuesday, December 30th.

I was in class. I was about to turn in all my work to the teacher, so I was already starting to pack off my things slowly. I got a call from my mom. She seemed very down. And she was like, It's like when you hear somebody, they're trying not to cry, but they're really holding it in. And I could hear in her voice, and that's when I started to get a little bit worried. She told me that you're her father got detained. And it's just like, you just start envision the worst. He's in this terrible place. This is a hard working man. No criminal record. You guys just took him.

I first spoke to Ila back in February. This was a month into the Trump administration, which had promised quick and mass deportations. I was calling immigration lawyers around the country, trying to get a sense of who exactly was getting targeted for deportation and how ICE was finding them. That's when a lawyer called me back, saying, You got to talk to Ila.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi. This is Jessica. This is Ila. She's Fabriso's 20-year-old daughter.

Okay, great. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, too. My name is Ila Gomez.

Right now, Ila is a sophomore at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Massachusetts, where she's studying architecture and interior design. She was raised in a town called Saugus, just outside Boston, where days before we had talked, her dad was detained by ICE officers. Tell me a little bit about your dad. What is his name, how old is he, and what does he My dad, he's Fabrício Gomez.

He is 47 years old, and he works at a construction company of his own.

Ila told me in 2001, her dad had settled here in Massachusetts as an He was an undocumented immigrant. He'd come here from Brazil. This was three years before Ila was born. Tell me about why he left Brazil.

. Sorry, I'm just asking these questions for my mom.. My mom said it was due to the violence down there, and he couldn't make a living for himself, let alone have a family down there.

When he first got here, he lived with his aunt who was already here. But eventually, he met Ila's mom, who was also from Brazil.

They actually walked into each other and they were like, Oh, my God. I remember you, blah, blah, blah.

And they moved out on their own with money Fabrício made by working in construction.

He had been working small jobs, almost like a handyman. Then he met somebody, which is my dad's old boss that still remains in our life, Ken. He slowly taught my dad how to work. It went from changing door panels, windows, to fixing inside the house. Then it went to roofing until he gathered up all his knowledge that he had. And then that's when he decided that he was ready to open his company and start creating a life for himself and our family.

And is your sense that he loves his job?

Yes. My dad is actually very passionate for his job. You would think he wouldn't be because you're constantly going up a ladder. It's so cold since we live in Massachusetts, and it's really a hard job.

Even though he wasn't fluent in English, he had this way of connecting with people.

My dad, he always talked to his clients. He knew them for so long. I don't know how he talks to them. Everybody understands him.

For as long as she can remember, Ila's wanted to be just like him.

As a little kid, I was like, my dad's tomboy. I'd always buy construction, little kids kit, and I would always go around the house with plastic toys. Me and my dad are the type of person where we take something that is not good and we reform it. When something's not designed properly, it just feels down, and when you reform it, it brings another life.

It sounds like you and your dad shared a special bond over your love of building things?

Yes. I always wanted to work with my dad, which is why I went to College for Architecture and Interior Design. So eventually in the future, I could work with my dad's company.

Ila says her dream is that her dad's company becomes a family company with her.

His dream was always for us to go to college and pursue something that we have passion for because they weren't able to choose their own path. You're not born saying, I'm going to clean toilets. I'm going to be a contractor. You're born thinking like, I want to be a businesswoman. I want to have my own company. I want to have my own home. It's just like, that's what their main goal for us was, that we're able to choose our own path. My dad, he's always been the person to tell us Work hard. Nothing's gifted, nothing's handed. Go after it.

So fast forward to today, the dream that you described your dad having for you guys was in progress. You're in college, your dad is working hard at a business that he owns. When Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, did your family have conversations about what precautions you guys would take given that he was aggressively pursuing people without documentation?

I would always ask my dad, Should we worry? And he'd always tell us, No, don't worry. As much as obviously, when I'm alone, you always have that thought in the back of your mind, What am I going to do? What if things go down?

Fabrício had no criminal record, and he didn't want to hide from law enforcement. He wanted to do things the right way. He's had a pending application for a visa. In In the meantime, he's been checking in with ICE. He's been doing that for 12 years. In February, just one month after Trump's inauguration, he was due for another check-in.

So he just shows up for his yearly check-in, and you go there, you represent yourself, talk about whatever is being asked. And that was about it.

And so her dad shows up to his check-in like he always does. And it was soon after that that her mom called her in class, notifying Ila that her dad had been detained.

After it was hyperventilating, I felt like my heart just left my chest. I think about him being there. I think about him being in this close-up space. So I worry a lot at night. What if he's panicking and we don't know? What if he's holding strong But he's actually having the hardest time in his life? That's what constantly replays in my head. So it just felt like my whole heart got ripped out of my chest because I never got to really say a proper goodbye, like, I'll see you later.

We'll be right back.

Ila's dad was detained on February 26. He was taken to the Plymouth County Correction Facility, about an hour's drive away from their home. Eventually, Ila was able to reach him on the phone.

I'll give it to my dad. From the first day that he called us to speak to us, that man has holding strong. He has the most positive energy and so positive that he will see us and things will go back to not normal because I don't feel like anybody could really treat life as normal after the situation, but definitely better.

Alaa's dad told her to hold strong, too. He said the detention center wasn't so bad. He told her he'd gotten a job cleaning, which allowed more time outside of his cell. He started a Bible study with a group of other detainees, and he was allowed visitors.

I'm the only one eligible to visit because I'm over 18. But he told me, as much as I would love to see you guys so much, just don't come here because this is not the person that I am, and it would hurt to see you get up from that chair and turn your back and have to leave.

But as the days in custody turn into weeks, the two of them adapted to a new version of their relationship. No visits. They talk on the phone a lot, as often as five times a day.

We open every conversation like he was here with us. I'm walking into the house saying hi to him. Hi, dad. How are you? I missed you. We continue lives how it is. On on the phone. I gave him updates on my grades. I gave him updates on my finals. Well, I can't show to him my projects since they're all online-based because they're all like, for plans, stuff like that. But I give him the visual analysis.

These calls went on for two months. And then in April, Ila learned of two major developments. First, ICE was going to enforce an order of removal against her dad, which meant he could be deported immediately. Second, ICE was moving him over 1,600 miles to a notorious detention center in Louisiana, which had been investigated by the Department of Homeland Security for alleged abuses. Ila says her dad's new detention center in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, is nothing like the one in Plymouth.

It's quite literally a prison where people that actually committed real crimes would be in. He's in a jail cell where it's just 10 times worse.

Things feel different. She senses that the brave face her dad had put on is starting to crack.

I don't want to say he's in full panic, but he's really feeling it. Even so on the phone, I can hear himself let go.

And this change in mood is starting to have an impact on Ila, too.

There's something wrong. My anxiety has been over the roof. It just feels like it's so hard to get through your day. It's so hard. You cannot tell me they'll be taking my dad, and he will be in Brazil for the next 10 years up until we can reapply for him. That does not cross my mind.

Oh, man. Would you ever consider moving to Brazil to be with your dad if it came to that?

As much as I would love to stay here and be like, Yeah, my family is going to reunite in Brazil, it It can't be a plan due to the fact that my parents have worked way too damn hard, too many years of their damn life to come here. I will be continuing college. If anything, I will be continuing their success times that by 100. I refuse to believe that they'll be throwing that away. If I can even continue my dad's company to keep going and get other people to manage it, I will be continuing to making their name. It's one thing to take my dad away from me. It's another to take everything that they worked hard for.

I wanted to ask, what do you make of the fact that for a lot of Americans, your father's story, while sympathetic, might at the end of the day feel like, yeah, he ultimately here, not legally. What would you say to those people who might agree with the administration's policies to remove people like your dad who don't have documentation here?

I get it if you're talking about a murderer that doesn't belong here and he's just out running on the street or I'd get that. But if you're okay with separating families because they're just simply immigrants, that's a battle you're dealing within yourself. If they're hearing my story specifically, I hope they hear that and that they try to picture one of their daughters sitting here and having to talk about one of their parents like this because somebody out there is wishing that on somebody else. I just really want them to picture that.

You mentioned you spent most of your life envisioning a future with your dad and going into business with your dad. Given everything that's happened, what is that dream now?

As of right now, there's no dream, no goal. It's just like, okay, well, my dream is to just be able to push through this.

Have you dreamt about reuniting with your dad, on the other hand?

That's been my little ideal dream since February 26. Just me getting that call of being told, go pick up your dad. And all I could think of is me just parking in my car, getting in my car. He's standing outside, quite literally the same exact person he left. In his work clothes, just the way he is with his face, his regular face.

Like no time had passed.

No, literally no time has passed, but it feels like life spent upside down.

Yeah.

Just hugging my dad and all I could literally do is cry, cry my literal heart out. Everything that I've been holding in within these two months, that's exactly how I see. It just feels like it's going to happen, and it's all I think about. That's all I can envision over and over again, every single day that I wake up. And it's just me. It's not like my mom's around, my sister's around. It's just me and my dad.

Ila never got the call to pick up her dad. Instead, a few days after we had talked, she received news that her dad had been deported from the US to Brazil. So Ila packed a small suitcase for herself and a bigger one for her dad, and she booked a ticket for one to Brazil. And on Tuesday morning, at the arrivals terminal in Bella Horizonte Airport, Ila finally got to be with her dad.

After the break, Senior producer Jessica Cheung on what happened after Ila reunited with her father.

Once you go through all the tunnel and everything, it's literally like a storefront door, like a sliding door. It just slides in like there, behind that door. And I literally see him standing in front of the door. I gave him a big hug. I missed him so much. It was so shocking. It's just like, What am I doing in Brazil? That was such a weird moment where it's just like, I'm so happy to see him, but I'm in shock. I'm like, What are we doing here? I guess this is it. This is how things are for now.

I guess the feeling you're describing is that you don't feel like you belong there in Brazil.

Yeah. Relationship-wise and treating each other, completely normal. For me, it was definitely that feeling of every day that I would wake up, it would be so weird. It's hot there. It's tropical. I don't belong here. I don't belong here. This is not where my dad's supposed to be. This is not where I'm supposed to be waking up. And how I'm going to see my dad adjust there, too, is very weird to me. It feels like he's on a vacation that there's no end date to.

Is there specific things you saw that triggered you into thinking I'm not supposed to be here? Is it the smell of, I don't know, the air? No, it was actually seeing things.

Seeing my dad with his brothers, I've never seen that a day in my life. Because he has four of them actually, was very weird to me, and I couldn't grasp it. They're just talking. They have so much to catch up on within years. It's not that he doesn't belong, obviously. That's his family, but that is not his family, family, where his family, his future lives here. Seeing my dad sitting there with the past as if they're littles and the present is somewhere else. It literally feels like he's catching up on the past, and in my opinion, not going anywhere.

You mentioned that you wanted, when we last talked, to work with your dad and that the dream was to start a company, to design and build places. I guess I wonder if that's still the plan, if you feel like that dream is still possible in some way.

I definitely feel like the dream is possible. There is It's a change of plans, unfortunately. But that doesn't mean I can't continue his legacy. My dad definitely didn't come here for, I believe, 20 or 24 years of his life here, built all this, and us give up. It's a little crazy to say, but that actually made me a little bit more determined. It makes me work harder because he's not here. I do co-ops. I work full-time. Ever since, life took a big churn financial-wise, so I'm always constantly working when I'm not in school. It's a very busy life. I just work. I just work and go to school and the cycle repeats every single day. I took this as a sign of I need to get up and do my own thing, build my life. I can't depend on my parents. They're always there for moral support, phone call away. But I need to grow up. I put my foot on the ground and say, Well, I'm going to make the best of it.

Today's episode was reported and produced by Jessica Cheung. It was edited by Michael Benoît and Jody Becker, with help from Ben Calhoun. It was fact-checked by Susan Lee. Contains music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, Alicia Baetup, Will Reid, and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley, Ronya Misto, and Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.