𝗔𝗦𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗘 𝗧𝗥𝗨𝗠𝗣'𝗦 𝗣𝗢𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗜𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗗𝗘𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗭𝗘𝗔𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗔𝗡 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗜𝗫 𝗬𝗘𝗔𝗥 𝗢𝗟𝗗 𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗜𝗡 𝗦𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗛 𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗔𝗦 𝗗𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

                                         

Sarah Shaw and her son, the South Texas Family Residential Center

              

When Sarah Shaw, a legal immigrant from New Zealand who works for the State of Washington, drove across the Canadian border this summer, she thought she was making a quick trip to see her two oldest children off to New Zealand, instead, she and her six-year-old son have spent the past three weeks inside the South Texas Family Residential Center, a private immigration detention facility more than 2,000 miles from her home.

Shaw, who has no criminal record, came to the United States three and a half years ago on a spousal visa, following a divorce, restarting her green card application under provisions that allow victims of domestic abuse to remain in the country while their cases are processed. She secured a job at Echo Glen Children’s Center, a state-run facility for at-risk youth outside Seattle, and maintained legal immigration status through a document known as a combo card, which served as both her work permit and her travel authorization or advance parole.

In July, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services eliminated combo cards, requiring separate approval for advance parole. Shaw, believing her authorization to travel was still valid, crossed into Canada without incident to put her children on a direct flight to Auckland from Vancouver, but when she returned with her youngest son she learned at the border that her advance parole had not yet been issued.

Her attorney advised her to explain the situation to Customs and Border Protection officers and request discretionary parole, a measure officials can grant in cases of administrative oversight. Shaw said she was told that her request had already been denied by a superior, a claim her lawyers now say was false.

Despite her son’s valid immigration status, border officers refused to release him into the care of friends or family, and the pair were instead transported to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, 71 miles south of San Antonio.  The center is the nation’s largest immigrant detention complex for women and children, operated by the private prison company CoreCivic under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and holds about 2,000 people, half children.  The facility was shuttered in August 2024 and reopened this spring under a contract costing taxpayers an estimated $15 million a month through 2030. Detainees have long criticized the center for limited access to lawyers, slow processing, and high costs for basic goods like hygiene products.

In Dilley, Shaw, after struggling to reach her Washington-based attorney and has hired a local lawyer in Texas. ICE has denied requests to release her son to an attorney or guardian and both remain detained without criminal charges. .

Her detention comes as the Trump administration  seeks to roll back the Flores Settlement Agreement, a decades-old court ruling that limits the detention of migrant children and requires safe and sanitary conditions. 

Trump's Justice Department has argued that Flores imposes an intrusive regime on immigration authorities and that the government should be allowed to detain minors indefinitely. The mother said recently, through an attorney:“We’ve been told they’re targeting the worst of the worst, but they’re locking up people like me and my son, and we’re paying for it.”

The case has drawn the attention of the New Zealand Embassy, which only learned of Shaw’s situation through news reports. 

Shaw, who initially thought she was being kidnapped, not detained, sleeps in a locked room with five bunk beds and can walk freely only between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. She and her son are among the few English speakers, and she worries that, like many mothers around her, she is trapped in a system that mistakes paperwork errors for threats to public safety.

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