Yoana Pleitez Romero should be looking forward to winter courses at Bunker Hill Community College. But instead, she has a long list of things to do.
Take her three little sisters to school. Go to her full-time clinic receptionist job. Talk to a lawyer. Drive for Uber Eats. Pick up the kids. Figure out where her stepdad is. Look for a third job. Not necessarily in that order.
“It’s hectic,” she said.
The 22-year-old has suddenly become the head of her household. On Saturday, Sept. 27, her stepfather was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Romero is one of a growing number of young adults and teenagers who have had to take over as the breadwinner when a parent or loved one is arrested by ICE — and in some cases, even deported.
“We are increasingly seeing the devastating results of this mass deportation effort, which is children raising children,” said Heather Yountz, senior immigration attorney at Mass Law Reform Institute. “What do the children do when their mom disappears?”
ICE has detained thousands of immigrants in Massachusetts since President Donald Trump’s inauguration. In May alone, nearly 1,500 people were detained in a concentrated operation. Nearly half had no criminal charges or convictions, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
While these teenagers and young adults step up to take care of their siblings, or get jobs to pay the rent, legal aid groups and social services are trying to figure out how best to help, connecting them to legal services, fundraisers for rent and mutual aid for groceries.
‘Is he the father of four daughters?’
Before he was detained, Alejandro Zamorano Deceano worked two jobs — one at a pizzeria from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in Quincy where he’s been a cook for 20 years. With monthly expenses rising for the family, he got a second job working at another pizzeria until 2:30 a.m. He had just parked and was carrying pizza boxes home around 3 a.m. when he was detained, just a couple minutes from their East Boston apartment.
Romero’s mother got a call from a nephew who was with him. GBH News is not naming the mother due to fears of deportation — she’s undocumented, too, and was deported in the past.
Romero volunteered to go out to see what was happening with her stepfather, since she has no fear of deportation.
But she felt anxious approaching the officers, who she said were taking another person from the street into a van.
“I asked them if they had arrested him and I gave his full name,” Romero said, recalling the agents were struggling to figure out if they’d detained him. “And then they said, ‘Is he the father of four daughters?’”
“I said, ‘Yes,’” she said.
The family couldn’t talk to Deceano for over a week. He was transferred to a detention facility in Buffalo, N.Y., then Mississippi. ICE hasn’t returned a request for comment.
Her 12- and 9-year-old siblings know their stepfather is detained. The youngest, 4-year-old Taylor, doesn’t.
Deceano has no criminal record, the family says.
“I think it was random — just they saw him and they saw that he was Hispanic and then that’s why they just grabbed him and asked him. And then, obviously, he didn’t lie. He said the truth. He didn’t have any papers. And then they took him,” Romero said.
Romero has been working around the clock to find a lawyer. So far, she hasn’t had any luck. One lawyer said that because the Trump administration is severely limiting bond hearings for detained immigrants, Deceano could be detained for a long time, and he might be better off self-deporting.
She reached out to countless nonprofits for legal help and advice on what to do next. One responded right away: Centro Presente.
Patricia Montes, Centro Presente’s executive director, says her group is figuring out how they can support Romero.
“Her case is an example of that trend that we’re seeing on the ground ... a lot of young people that should be going to college, that should be enjoying their time as young people,” she said. “Now they are taking responsibilities because of this inhumane immigration policy that we’re seeing right now.”
‘I have to take responsibility’
When she’s sitting at the kitchen table with her mother and three sisters, Romero exudes confidence. She smiles as the girls watch TV, 9-year-old Allison plays hot cross buns on recorder and 12-year-old Ashley works on her math homework.
But later — away from her family, in her room — she’s worried.
Romero remembers 15 years ago, when she was seven, an ICE agent came to the door. He detained and deported her mom and uncle.
“It’s not something that I would have ever wished for my sisters,” she said. Romero’s mother eventually made her way back from El Salvador and the family moved to their East Boston apartment.
Things were good. The family had fun when they could at Chuck E. Cheese, Piers Park and the carnival.
Deceano worked six days a week. Romero’s mother worked, too — but in her most recent job at an Eagle Hill bakery, she says her boss withheld months of wages from her. The family can’t go to small claims court to recoup the funds because her name would become public, making her vulnerable to deportation. She is now terrified of leaving the house.
So the weight of carrying on the family’s day-to-day life falls to Romero.
“I have to be strong for them,” she said, crying in her dimly lit bedroom where cardboard covers the windows. “I don’t cry in front of them — I can’t break down in front of them. Even my mom, she will break down even if we mention it.”
Romero works full-time as a receptionist making nearly $20 an hour at Neighborhood Health, and picks up shifts with Uber Eats.
But she’s looking for a third job: she needs to double her income to make the $4,000 month her family needs to survive. The family’s rent is $2,100 a month, and car and insurance payments come to $1,100. That doesn’t include groceries, utilities or Wi-Fi for the kids to do their homework.
She dreams of being a pediatric nurse and registered for courses at Bunker Hill starting in January, using tuition benefits from her receptionist job. But she might have to put that on hold.
“Worst comes to worst, I’ll drop the classes,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out this situation.”
‘An emotional battle’ and help from advocates
Romero is not the only youth taking over family duties due to immigration detention.
Heitor Soares, 19, had just graduated from high school in Malden when his father was detained this past June after dropping off his siblings at school. His father used his Apple Watch to reach out to family.
“They pulled up in front of him, pulled up behind him, opened up the door, dragged him out,” Soares recounted from his conversations with his father. “It was quick. They left his car wide open. My uncle, when he found out, he got there and it was just the car sitting there, still running.”
“He was the person who made sure all the phone bills were paid. He made sure all the health care was paid.”Heitor Soares, 19, whose father was detained
Soares said his father has no criminal record. He was already living away from his parents and had been preparing to go to college this fall, first at Bunker Hill Community College, with the hopes of transferring to Lesley University eventually.
“This kind of halted any plans of me going to college,” he said.
Soares spoke with legal advocates and raised over $30,000 through a GoFundMe for his family. He took on a full-time job at a toy store in Somerville where he’d been picking up shifts.
By August, his father had grown upset and depressed in detention. He told his son he saw people try to end their own lives in the detention center. ICE didn’t return a request for comment about that claim.
“‘I don’t want to stay in a country that doesn’t treat me well, that doesn’t want me here,’” Soares recalled his father telling him. “‘It doesn’t make sense to me.’”
His father self-deported to Brazil.
Now Soares uses the GoFundMe money to help his mother and siblings pay rent and tries to give them some of his own work money. He picks up his younger brothers from school every day, too.
“I kind of, without thinking, just did everything I could to try to be helpful,” he said.
His mom is planning to self-deport to Brazil with his siblings, who are U.S. citizens, while Soares remains here, saving again for college. He’s hoping to one day become a history teacher or a social worker.
Soares called being separated from family “an emotional battle.”
“I just took up, kind of, the mantle of what my dad was doing already. He was the person who made sure all the phone bills were paid. He made sure all the health care was paid,” Soares said. “It puts a family at a disadvantage.”
Across the state, advocates are trying to figure out what to do to help.
“Both legal service organizations and private attorneys are coming to us with: ‘This parent — the only breadwinner, only adult in the household — has just been detained,’” said Yountz with the Mass Law Reform Institute. “We can’t even locate the parent. And now the oldest child is at home trying to take care of the younger siblings.”
Magali Garcia-Pletsch, executive director of Waltham Partnership for Youth, works with schools and families to help immigrants get the support they need in the community. When one young person’s parent was detained, she remembered, they had to launch a fundraiser to gather enough money for bail.
Sometimes they’re still in high school.
“We’ve also seen students who maybe had one parent or guardian detained by ICE need to then step up and either take on new work shifts or start working for the first time to contribute financially to their families,” she said.
Jacob Chin is an attorney and organizer who lives in New Bedford. One of the many groups he works with is New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools, which works with immigrant families.
Families that haven’t been separated have him help prepare their legal documents and guardianship information — getting ready in case they are.
“It’s as emotional as it is technical, right? It’s not an easy conversation. People are wary of what they’re doing,” he said.
These days, Romero thinks her stepfather may have to self-deport to Mexico. She keeps hearing the same advice: that there’s no point in hiring a lawyer if the outcome is going to be the same either way.
But that changes day by day. She’s scared for her siblings, and her mom.
“I can’t even risk her leaving the house because I’m afraid that if something were to happen to her — like, what am I supposed to do with my three little sisters?” Romero said. “I feel like mentally I’m OK because at least they’re with their mom. They’re with me, who will protect them.”
