Mother who cut wrist in migrant detention speaks out after deportation
Mother who cut wrist in migrant detention speaks out after deportation
June 17, 2015
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras —
In her first interview since being sent back to Honduras, the teenage mother who cut her wrist in U.S. custody described a dramatic six days – in which, she said, she was taken from her young son, stripped naked in front of screaming staffers, put into isolation and then hidden at a hotel before a hasty deportation.
Days later, Lilian Oliva Bardales, 19, is back in her home country – one of the world’s most dangerous – living temporarily with relatives as she contemplates her next move.
In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with McClatchy, Oliva for the first time shared what happened to her at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas after she cut her wrist using her broken ID bracelet and was put on suicide watch. She described the treatment as punishment, not health care.
Oliva’s story is just one experience in a detention center housing hundreds of migrant women, detained with their children, who have fled violent nations in Central America in the past year. U.S. immigration officials argue Oliva, a victim of domestic violence in Honduras, had every opportunity to prove she deserved asylum; her lawyer says she was sent back before she could exhaust her appeals.
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