Leo is nine years old and in fourth grade. He likes superheroes, zombies, Legos and Pokémon cards.
His father was the same age when his family brought him from Mexico to the United States. Now, after five months sitting in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention following his arrest by the Memphis Safe Task Force, Leo’s father is being pressured by immigration officials to sign papers agreeing to return to Mexico.
If he does sign, he’ll be sent back to a country he only remembers as a child. And, he’d leave behind two sons — Leo and his half-brother — who are among the 4.4 million U.S.-born children with a parent who is not authorized to be in the United States, according to Pew Research Center.
Leo and his mother Jasmin are being referred to by their middle names out of fear that speaking out could impact the pending immigration case for Leo’s father, who will be identified by the pseudonym Antonio.
Antonio is just one of hundreds of immigrants who have been taken by the Memphis Safe Task Force since the operation began at the end of September, leaving behind family and other loved ones.
Of the more than 5,200 arrests credited to the task force in and around Memphis through early February, more than 800 were of immigrants who law enforcement has deemed unlawfully present, MLK50: Justice Through Journalism and ProPublica found. Of those, just 2% — or 17 — were also arrested for violent crimes, our analysis found. Being unlawfully present is a civil offense, not criminal.
Nationwide, President Donald Trump’s administration detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children during the first seven months of his second term, according to a data analysis by ProPublica. ProPublica estimates that by late March, that number will have roughly doubled.
Trump argued during his March 23 visit to Memphis that he is making families safer, but his assertion is undercut by the task force’s track record of arresting hundreds of Memphians who are only charged with “unlawful presence.” Immigrant and mixed-status families like Leo’s live in constant fear that a family member could be arrested at any point, and are destabilized when their worst fears come true.
“We’re not certain of what’s next, what route this administration might take or how that will impact the police presence in the city, whether or not we’ll have more family members that could, you know, suffer the same fate,” Jasmin said. “But at this point, we just have to stick together.”
Christmas, Thanksgiving spent in detention
About a month before Christmas, Jasmin got a call from Antonio. He’d been stopped on a busy Memphis street by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for having tinted windows, while on the way home from his job as a plumber. Then, he was detained by ICE.
“You don’t think that it’s going to affect you until it does, and you hear about it happening to other people, but you don’t necessarily see it,” Jasmin said. “So it’s just been a lot to process, and it’s been a lot to learn how to explain it to my son in ways he’ll understand.”
Antonio had previously pursued naturalization with his wife, who is a U.S. citizen, but had to stop due to financial constraints, Jasmin said. Antonio’s wife, who is also the mother of his four-year-old son, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Becoming a U.S. citizen in 2026 costs between $800 to $4,000 per applicant, including hiring an attorney and paying filing fees, according to immigration law firm Marble.
Antonio was arrested following a traffic violation for “being unlawfully present in the United States,” according to a Memphis Safe Task Force arrest report. Since then, he’s been held in the West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason, about 40 minutes outside of Memphis. He spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas there.
The Memphis Safe Task Force has conducted more than 82,000 traffic stops, according to the Memphis Police Department. MLK50 and ProPublica found that the vast majority of immigration detentions occurred after such stops.
At first, Jasmin didn’t tell her son that his father was being held in ICE detention. Instead, she told him that he was away for work. An attorney filed a petition to keep Antonio from being transferred out of Tennessee. But as Christmas neared and Antonio’s request for bond was denied, Jasmin told her son what happened. She said if his father is deported, they’ll go visit.
“We’re hoping that is not what happens and that he is able to come home and still be a part of his child’s life and his other son as well,” Jasmin said.
Leo was quiet over Christmas. He seemed to distract himself with games and his phone, rather than interacting with others like he usually did.
Antonio still asked Leo for a wishlist of gifts from Santa. His wife and other relatives made sure that Leo still got those presents from his father. But Christmas wasn’t the same.
From days at the park to blurry video calls
In their brightly lit living room on a Saturday in March, Leo watches the superhero show “The Flash.” Jasmin’s carefully tended house plants frame the windows. A bag of pan dulce sits on the kitchen table, and Leo’s drawings cover the fridge. Above Leo, a superhero action figure is stuck to the ceiling where he tossed it. Jasmin and Leo spend a lot of time in the living room together, they said, watching shows and putting together Legos.
When the task force first arrived in Memphis, Jasmin and Antonio discussed how they would handle school pickups and drop-offs. They split custody, but agreed that Jasmin would take their son to and from school and activities to minimize risk to Antonio.
Before his father’s detainment, Leo would spend days with his dad going to the park, sometimes taking his bike. They used to go fishing together. Leo would watch his scary shows — including the ones with zombies, which give Jasmin the “ick” — with his father, leaving the superheroes for when he was home with Jasmin.
Antonio’s detainment has increased the financial burden on Jasmin, and also brought on the challenge of having to parent alone, she said, including when Leo was sick and Jasmin had to take off time from work to bring him to the hospital
From the detention center in Mason, Antonio is able to call his son via video, sometimes once a week for 30 minutes. They can’t schedule the calls in advance, so times aren’t always consistent. Sometimes, Jasmin has missed his calls. The signal is spotty and it’s hard to hear, Jasmin said. Sometimes the calls don’t connect at all.
“Sometimes the phone will be like blurry,” Leo said. “I can hear him, it’s just that the background has a lot of noise.”
Jasmin can message him, too, via the Getting Out application, but it costs about 35 cents per text. She estimates that she’s already spent hundreds on messages, so she’s careful about messaging too often. Even when she doesn’t plan to send a message, she opens the app every day to see the little bubble indicating that he’s on his tablet. It gives her peace of mind, she said.
In early March, months after Antonio was detained, Jasmin and Leo visited him at the detention center for the first time. They had expected to visit through a window, but ended up getting to sit at the same table, hugging and talking for an hour. Antonio wanted updates about how Leo is doing in school and in basketball. A coordinator provided coloring pages and activities for the visiting children. Leo took one page and his father took another, coloring as they talked.
Leo was excited to see his dad, but it was a difficult goodbye after their hour ended. Since then, Leo hasn’t wanted to go to school, Jasmin said. He acts afraid of also being separated from her.
Antonio has told Jasmin that the facility smells like sewage and that the food is bland. He spends his days sleeping or talking to other detainees. Sometimes they play cards. The longer he’s there, the more the idea of accepting voluntary deportation to Mexico appeals to him, Jasmin said.
But that raises questions: If Antonio is sent to Mexico, will it be to Michoacán, where he has family, or will he be dropped off in another part of the country? And if he accepts voluntary deportation, will there be a legal pathway for him to return to his two sons?
“He hasn’t been there since a kid,” Jasmin said. “So that would be a whole new thing for him, a whole new culture shock, more than likely. But the hope is that you know, at least he’ll be free.”
But for now, Antonio has told her that “he’s gonna try to stick it out so that hopefully he can get out and be with his children,” Jasmin said.
Rethinking her son’s future
Jasmin’s family are immigrants too. Her parents moved to the United States from different parts of Mexico, and met in Houston, where Jasmin was born. They moved to Memphis when she was three years old.
“I was born here, and never in my life did I think that later on in life I would be affected in this manner, or that my son will be affected in this manner,” Jasmin said.
Jasmin said she is privileged because she was born in the United States, although she still faces discrimination and the consequences of Trump’s immigration policies. As for Antonio, he didn’t get to choose where he was born, or that he was brought to the United States as a child, Jasmin said.
“That was a decision that was made for him by others, by his family, who was looking for a better future for their family, for their children, for their children’s children,” she said. “What would you do for your family? Would you cross the border?”
Jasmin and her other family members made sure to apply for passports last year after Trump’s reelection, when they were on “high alert.” She’s glad she did so, because she and Leo can visit his father if he is deported. She hopes the passports won’t be needed.
“There are a lot of things that have been put into perspective, a lot of things that have changed,” Jasmin said. “I’ve had to basically have to rethink how my son’s future will be because of this.”
Data reporting by Nick McMillan of ProPublica.
Katherine Burgess is the government accountability reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at katherine.burgess@mlk50.com
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