Florida Breastfeeding Mom Detained by ICE, Separated From 1-Year-Old

Yury Ussa Polania met Cristian* in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2011. What began as a friendship quickly blossomed into love, and by 2013, they were married with a baby on the way. *Cristian is identified only by his first name in this story to safeguard his identity.

Raised in a family of political activists, Ussa Polania naturally followed in their footsteps. But as it became increasingly unsafe for her family to stay in the country, the risks grew too great to ignore. In 2020, seeking safety and a better future, Ussa Polania, Cristian, and their young son relocated to the United States.

Upon settling near Orlando, Florida, Cristian and Ussa Polania applied for asylum and were granted work authorization by the U.S. government until 2029. To make ends meet, they picked up a series of odd jobs: Ussa Polania cleaned houses, while Cristian took on tasks like pressure-washing roofs. They also drove for Uber and worked shifts at a local car dealership.

When Ussa Polania became pregnant last year with their baby girl, Cristian recalls working nearly 14-hour days to make ends meet. He admits things were tough back then — and they’ve been even tougher lately.

On May 3, Ussa Polania was arrested near Orlando, Florida, for petit theft after allegedly shoplifting $34 worth of items from a Walmart store. An arrest report shows that she admitted to stealing the items for her daughter's first birthday party; she couldn't afford to pay for them, she told police.

But while the 44-year-old was jailed in Seminole County on the misdemeanor charge and quickly posted bond, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials immediately detained her. As of May 13, she remains detained at the for-profit Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, more than 200 miles away from her husband, 11-year-old son, and breastfeeding infant.

"It has been very traumatizing," Cristian tells New Times in Spanish.

Ussa Polania, who was born in Colombia, filed a habeas corpus petition against ICE last week, alleging that the federal agency unlawfully detained her, despite her pending asylum claim and valid work authorization through 2029. The petition further claims that her detention has resulted in "forced separation" from her year-old daughter, posing "serious risks" to health and well-being of the infant, who she had been breastfeeding.

"ICE's actions threaten to inflict irreversible harm on a U.S. citizen minor," the motion (attached at the bottom of this story) reads.

Studies have shown that abrupt weaning (when a woman abruptly stops breastfeeding) is "traumatic for the infant, uncomfortable for the mother, and may result in blocked ducts, mastitis or breast abscesses," among other problems. "Abrupt weaning is to be avoided if possible," one study reads.

Although a judge blocked Donald Trump's controversial "zero tolerance" family-separation policy from his first term in office, some families still remain separated under Trump 2.0 — and in recent weeks, new cases have emerged involving family separations under the administration's immigration crackdown.

Last month, ICE deported Heidy Sánchez, the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl, after detaining her at a scheduled immigration check-in appointment in Tampa. Sánchez's attorney said she was torn away from her breastfeeding daughter, who suffers from seizures.

ICE also recently deported three U.S. citizen children, ages 2, 4, and 7, along with their Honduran-born mothers, in a move that the American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project, and other groups called a "shocking — although increasingly common — abuse of power."

Cristian describes Ussa Polania as a "dedicated, exceptional" person. During the few times he's spoken to his wife since she was taken by ICE, she's told him she has been mistreated by officers in the immigration facilities where she is staying. In some of the facilities, the officers do not even allow her to cry, she told him.

While Cristian says their infant is too young to understand what's happening, he's had to shield their 11-year-old son from their current reality, telling him only that Ussa Polania ran into an issue with the police owing to a "misunderstanding."

"We don't want to traumatize him, and we don't want him to know the magnitude of the problem," Cristian says.

Ocala resident Yoram "Jay" Bar-Levy, an Orthodox rabbi and paralegal who works with the group Alianza Republicana de las Américas, has been helping Ussa Polania with her case.

Since police jailed her in North Florida last week, Bar-Levy says, immigration officials have transferred Ussa Polania between immigration facilities at least five or six times.

While immigration officials told her family that she would be released this past weekend, and her loved ones drove to Miami's Krome Detention Center to pick her up, officials never let Ussa Polania free. Instead, Bar-Levy says, ICE officers "surrounded" her family members at the facility and interrogated them about their immigration statuses.

"What we believe is that ICE summoned them to go pick her up because they wanted to ambush them and see if whoever picked her up was legal in the United States," Bar-Levy tells New Times.

As noted in the habeas corpus petition, immigration officials also told Ussa Polania that she would eventually be transferred to Texas — despite the fact that her family, legal counsel, and young child are all in Florida.

And on May 13, when Ussa Polania sat down for a meeting with immigration officials, they pressured her to leave the country voluntarily and falsely claimed she was in the U.S. illegally, she told Bar-Levy.

"They are lying to lure her to sign [for] deportation," Bar-Levy says.

While Ussa Polania remains in immigrant detention, Cristian says it has been challenging to juggle long work hours to support the family financially while also caring for their two young children.

"Due to me having to work, sometimes I can't pick them up [from school]," he says, "because I just come out of work, go to sleep, and go back to work. And it has been very hard to rely on other people to take care of our children."

Meanwhile, Ussa Polania's sister has helped care for her year-old daughter. And the breast milk Ussa Polania left in the refrigerator is running out.

"They don't what to do," Bar-Levy says.