Screenshot via YouTube/Noticias Telemundo
Audio By Carbonatix
Last August, Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya and her family enjoyed a vacation together at Disney World. It was so fun, the 9-year-old said, that she begged her mom to return months later for the park’s annual Halloween celebration, Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.
As Maria Antonia later recalled to ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg — who in mid-January interviewed the young girl inside Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a Texas-based immigration detention center for families and children — the family booked tickets for a 10-day vacation during Maria Antonia’s school holidays. The young girl lives in Colombia with her grandmother and regularly travels to the United States to visit her mother, who has been in the U.S. since 2018. (Her mother, Maria Alejandra Montoya, had overstayed a visa but since married a U.S. citizen and was applying for a green card).
Rosenberg recalled how the young girl “lit up” while describing how she meticulously planned out a 101 Dalmatians costume for the Halloween event; she would dress up as Cruella de Vil while her mom and stepdad dressed as the spotted dogs.
But once the young girl arrived at Miami International Airport (MIA) on October 2, the trip quickly unraveled.
Instead of being reunited with her mother after landing, Maria Antonia said she was intercepted by immigration officers while being escorted as an unaccompanied minor by a flight attendant and taken into a room for questioning. Her mother was led into a separate room.
She recalled being asked questions she didn’t know how to answer. As she told Rosenberg, she kept repeating that she could share her name, her birthday, her mother’s name and birthday, and that she was from Colombia, but that was about it.
After what they described as hours of questioning, the mother and daughter were reportedly placed in a room together. Maria Alejandra described her phone being confiscated, leaving her unable to contact her husband, who was waiting for them at the airport. Maria Antonia said she was confused; if her mother was applying for a green card — and if she herself had a valid tourist visa — why were they being detained?
The mother and daughter described waiting 42 hours in the airport holding rooms before being loaded onto a plane, then a minivan, to the facility in Texas, which was recently thrust into the national spotlight after housing 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Ecuador, who was detained with his father in Minneapolis while wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a blue bunny hat. Images of the boy went viral on social media, prompting widespread condemnation and a protest by the detainees.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees immigration enforcement at MIA, did not respond to emailed questions from New Times about the family’s detention at the airport, including an inquiry about the legal basis for detaining Maria Antonia upon arrival. It’s unclear how many minors have been detained by CBP at MIA since the Trump administration ramped up its aggressive immigration enforcement early last year. (New Times asked a CBP spokesperson for the data, but has not received it as of publication.)
A spokesperson for MIA referred New Times to CBP. “The Miami-Dade Aviation Department has no information about this incident,” they wrote in an email.
By the time Rosenberg, the ProPublica reporter, met the family in January, they had been detained at Dilley for nearly four months.
A vegetarian who said she ate mostly beans, the young girl recalled that she had fainted twice since arriving at the facility. Her mother described her daughter waking up in the middle of the night, crying, fearful that she would be separated from her mom or never leave detention at all.
Rosenberg received letters and drawings from children inside Dilley, including Maria Antonia. In one letter — decorated with small hand-drawn hearts, rainbows, and sad faces, alongside a sketch of her and her mother in government-issued sweatsuits — the girl wrote that she felt like “being here was my fault… I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”
“I don’t eat well, there is no good education and I miss my best friend julieta and my grandmother and my school I already want to get to my house,” the letter read.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which DHS oversees, told ProPublica that Maria Alejandra overstayed her tourist visa and had previously been arrested for theft (a charge, per court documents, that was dismissed).
DHS said that during her time in detention, Maria Antonia was seen by medical professionals twice and also had weekly check-ins with mental health professionals, “where she stated she was calm and well-nourished.” They also said everyone held at the facility is “provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries,” and “certified dieticians evaluate meals.”
They added that “children have access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets for math, reading, and spelling,” and that no one is denied medical care. CoreCivic, the massive private prison and detention center operator that runs the facility, said it is subject to multiple layers of oversight and that health and safety are top priorities. (Of note: two detainees at the facility recently contracted measles, which health officials said was “limited” and appears to have been contained).
On January 6, an immigration judge granted the family voluntary departure, allowing Maria Alejandra to pay for their return to Colombia and avoid a formal deportation order — preserving her ability to continue her green card application from abroad. On February 6, the mother and daughter flew back to Colombia.
A few days later, Rosenberg received a video.
In it, she described Maria Antonia, wearing pink leggings and a teddy bear T-shirt, running to hug her teachers one by one outside her school. One teacher is seen leading the young girl by the hand into the classroom.
“Look who I brought you!” the teacher says, before Maria Antonia’s best friend leaps from her desk and wraps her in a hug.
