In February 2025, a Venezuelan-American lawyer named Beatrice received an order from the Department of the Home Office to the nonprofit organization she worked for.
Beatrice represents an unaccompanied minor. Children filing immigration lawsuits without parents. These young people are extremely vulnerable. They may live with their families, be placed in foster parents, or be detained in detention centers. Some are younger or younger than Beatrice herself when she did not come here at the age of eight after she herself fled from the rise in violence and political persecution in Venezuela.
After seeing her parents sit through countless meetings with immigration lawyers, Beatrice heads to law school in the hopes of using her own experience to help others. “I am a child, and I know how horrible it is to try to deal with someone with authority, not being able to speak English alone,” says Beatrice, a current citizen. “So I became a lawyer to bring empathy to the process.”
Ordering for the halt work disrupts the effort. “It came out completely from the blue. To my surprise, everything changed,” Beatrice says. Federal contracts have been cancelled, and organizations across the country have been forced to reduce personnel, such as Beatriz. “For us who left, it was all on the deck,” Beatrice says.
The order for the suspension work was later revoked, but a legal battle over a cancelled contract is underway. In the meantime, the damage has occurred. “In reality, we left children free to advocate for them,” explains Beatrice. While being forbidden to help the children, Beatrice and her colleagues attended many hearings simply to observe and take notes. In one heart-pounding case, Beatrice saw a confused six-year-old appear in court without any statements. “These young children are being taken to immigration hearings without English and without lawyers to explain why they should not be deported.”
The immigration court also uses “rocket dockets” to pack hearings for more than one day in one day. “They started quickly following the kids through the system when we couldn’t accompany them,” Beatrice says. “It’s just an onslaught of attacks, specifically targeting unaccompanied children.”
Beatrice also saw the child’s life become disrupted as caregivers are being held on ice. Some of her younger clients were placed in detention or in village. In some cases, the government refused to tell Beatrice’s team that the child’s caregiver was being held. “It’s something none of my bosses, including those who worked during Trump’s first term — something I’ve never experienced before,” she says.
As a result, Beatrice now sees children who are afraid to go to school or leave the house on a daily basis. “A lot of my job now deals with uneasy children,” Beatrice says. “Most of these kids have a deep sense that the United States is no longer a safe place for them.”
It’s not just the kids who feel this way. It’s the whole community of Beatrice. Even before the Trump administration canceled the temporary protection status of around 350,000 Venezuelans, her WhatsApp group was packed with people whose loved ones had disappeared from their American neighborhoods. “I have friends who are afraid to step into the streets,” she says. “The demonization of my culture and my community is really hurtful and really harmful.”
As authorities talk about turning American citizens into foreign prisons, deporting them, and eliminating the legitimate process of immigration, Beatrice worries that her parents and siblings (now American citizens are also worried that everything is not safe.” “We worked so hard to get citizenship, but there’s still a real fear that they won’t protect us,” she says. “For Venezuelans, anxiety is always there, and it really weighs on us.”
