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Venezuelan migrant mother and two children deported to México just hours after Tucson traffic stop
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| Contributor | E Pluribus Unum |
| Last Edited | E Pluribus Unum Feb 17, 2025 10:11pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | John Washington |
| News Date | Monday, February 17, 2025 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | After Arizona state troopers pulled her over in Tucson for driving under the speed limit, Yesenia begged to see her babies. The fear the migrant mother of four lived with — before and after fleeing the civil unraveling in her home country of Venezuela — didn’t prepare her for the pain of being separated from her children in the United States.
“I told them I had two other children,” Yesenia says in Spanish in a Feb. 15 video shared with Arizona Luminaria. In a sparse room in southern México, she speaks softly. Her little boy and girl are playing in the background.
The Venezuelan mother asked Border Patrol agents if she could go to her house, or if they would take her there for her other two children. The agents had her in handcuffs on the side of the road on the south side of Tucson.
“They said, ‘no,’” she says. They wouldn’t let her go to her other two children. “They said that wasn’t their problem. That was my problem.”
With agents standing guard, Yesenia watched over her 6-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy, thinking about their brothers, ages 8 and 14, at home with her sister-in-law.
The problem started that night, Feb. 11, at a QuikTrip gas station where Yesenia was selling empanadas.
She told Arizona Luminaria on Feb. 15 that a woman in the parking lot started “verbally attacking” her, threatening to call the police. She says minutes later the police showed up. She packed her things and her children into her SUV — already nearly full with the supplies she used to clean houses — and started driving away.
Moments later, Arizona Department of Public Safety troopers pulled her over.
The traffic ticket, for driving 25 mph in a 40 mph zone, reviewed by Arizona Luminaria stated she was driving at a speed that would “impede traffic.” The citation included additional violations for no insurance, a suspended license plate and not wearing seatbelts.
Yesenia says she gave an officer the ID she had received |
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