Communities Rally for Immigrant Mothers Locked in Detention on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is supposed to be a time to celebrate the women who raised us. But for thousands of immigrant mothers across the United States, it’s a day marked by separation and loss—locked up in ICE detention centers, ripped from their children and communities. This year, community members in Colorado and California made sure these mothers were not forgotten.

In Aurora, Colorado, activists gathered outside the GEO Group’s for-profit detention center, holding candles and signs, their voices amplified through megaphones to reach those inside. Meanwhile, in San Diego, volunteers created heartfelt Mother’s Day cards and delivered them with yellow flowers to the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a grim reminder of the human lives behind the bars.

These gestures are more than symbolic. They highlight a brutal reality: since the Trump administration took office, ICE has dramatically escalated detention and deportation, including detaining the parents of at least 50 U.S. citizen children every day. Mothers of citizen children are being deported at four times the rate of the previous administration, according to ProPublica’s research.

The consequences ripple far beyond the detention centers. Families left behind face financial ruin, housing insecurity, and emotional trauma. In Florida, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) helps fill the gap with the Miramar Circle of Protection, a grassroots effort providing food, legal aid, and emotional support to families impacted by ICE’s raids and detentions.

Stories like Gladis’s show the human toll: her husband was detained when their youngest child was just two weeks old, forcing her to rely on community fundraising to keep a roof over their heads. Doris and her husband faced deportation together, prompting difficult decisions about their children’s futures. And Ana, left alone after her husband’s deportation, received vital support from the Circle of Protection to keep her family afloat.

“We are not charity,” says Maria Bilbao, AFSC Campaigns Coordinator. “We are showing up. We are bearing witness. We are documenting everything we’re seeing.” This is the kind of community solidarity that challenges the inhumanity of a system designed to punish families rather than protect them.

Mother’s Day should never mean family separation. These acts of solidarity remind us that immigrant mothers are not invisible, and that the fight to end detention and uphold human dignity is far from over. We stand with every mother behind those walls—and with the communities who refuse to let their stories be erased.