NEWS

EXCLUSIVE: Detained Mississippi immigrant speaks out

Sarah Fowler
The Clarion-Ledger
Daniela Vargas, 22, was released Friday from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody after being detained after speaking out at a news conference in Jackson.

For 10 days, Daniela Vargas existed in a world closed off from the rest of society.

She didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. She cried for the first 48 hours.

She was alive but she wasn’t living. Her new reality was a far cry from the life she knew. The life she knew before immigration agents took her into custody.

But Vargas did what she has been doing since she was a 7-year-old immigrant who didn’t speak the same language as the other first-graders. She adapted.

Vargas came to the United States from Argentina in 2001.

She, her parents and older brother settled in to life in Morton. Sunday was “family day” and, after church, the family would go for long drives on back roads where her dad would show off his navigation skills. Then, they’d stop for lunch.

“Lunch options were always Mexican or Chinese,” Vargas said. “It wasn’t ever anything else. ... Those were fun days for us. That’s what we liked.”

Vargas, who didn’t speak English, quickly assimilated into life in Mississippi, but the first year presented cultural challenges.

She vividly remembers her first Halloween in America. Her first-grade teacher had invited parents to come to the school and carve pumpkins with their children.

“My mom didn’t want to come because she didn’t speak English and she was embarrassed, so I didn’t have anyone to do pumpkin carving with,” Vargas said. “But then this girl and her mom, they just let me watch, but at least I got to be with them. From then on out, second grade, third grade, I started learning the language.”

In the following months and years, Vargas would immerse herself in local sports. She played multiple sports in the city’s league and excelled in soccer.

When she entered eighth grade, she decided to try out for band. It didn’t go well. “God, I was terrible.”

A new band director arrived and told Vargas she could play the trumpet. That night, her mother went out and bought a $1,000 trumpet.

“She was so proud,” Vargas said. “I couldn’t play anything.”

When Vargas was in 10th grade, her brother fell on her trumpet, flattening it beyond repair. Her mother bought her a new one, a prized Yamaha Xeno that was silver.

“All of the cool kids, if you know how to play, you get a silver trumpet,” she said. “I have that one still.”

The trumpet did not come without conditions. Vargas’ mother continually impressed upon her that she had to be the best.

“I had to get the solos ... I had to get it so she could go tell all her friends that I got the solo.”

Vargas felt pressure with her grades, too. She was making straight A’s, but her mother expected more.

“I am privileged to be here so I have to go to school, I have to be great and I have to make them proud,” she said of her parents.

One day, however, Vargas wrote her mother a letter, telling her the pressure was too much.

Their relationship took on a different tone. Vargas now calls her mother her best friend.

“We just grew this bond, this relationship … to have a best friend at that age and it be your mom was the best thing. I trust my mom more than anybody,” she said.

Vargas was on her way to see her mother when she was detained by agents with U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement.

Vargas, who has been in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy, had just left a news conference where she was speaking out in support of fellow DACA recipients and what they could contribute to American society.

ICE agents had detained her father and brother two weeks prior, but Vargas said she didn’t think it would happen to her.

“I wanted to freely say what I wanted to say and mean it," she said. "I wanted this country, or the president, to know that we are an asset to this country. We’re not just here to steal jobs. We’re here doing nice things. We’re working. We’re contributing. We’re doing the best we can.”

Then ICE agents moved in.

“It was scary. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even think, all I could do was yell. I started yelling, ‘Call Abigail, call Abigail, call my mom,’" she said, referring to her attorney, Abby Peterson of Jackson. "I was like, ‘Please help me.’ They sat me in the car, and I just bawled. I didn’t get it. I didn’t know why it was happening. Why me? Why any of that?”

She was taken to an ICE holding facility in Pearl. She was weighed, fingerprinted, her mug shot taken and ankles shackled. She says agents asked her details about her family, including her mother’s location.

She was placed in a temporary holding cell for several hours. Then, she was driven the four hours to LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana.

She looked out the window the entire drive, telling herself, “I just want to see the trees, I just want to see the road, I just want to see people before I can’t do that again.”

“I was crying but I was really trying to feel the outdoors for a minute before I was taken. I didn’t know how long I was going to be taken for. I didn’t know anything.”

Once at LaSalle, she was placed in another temporary cell. The room was “freezing,” Vargas said, and crumpled tissues were in the air vent in the ceiling, a reminder of those who had come before her.

She was given three pairs of thick, navy blue scrubs, socks and slip-on sandals. She was then escorted into a room the size of a gymnasium with cinder block walls.

She couldn’t see the 15 tables and four chairs at the front, the wall-to-wall bunk beds in the middle or the five open showers, sinks and toilets lined along the back wall. Her vision was clouded with tears. She could, however, very clearly hear the sound of barking.

The other women were barking at her, whistling and “making dog noises,” telling her to come sleep by them.

A top bunk was the only one available. The sheets weren’t fitted sheets, so Vargas had to tie the ends to make it fit. One woman helped her and then volunteered to let Vargas call someone using her phone account.

Vargas called her mother.

“She said, ‘We’re doing everything we can,’ but I didn’t know what that meant.”

The women were allowed to go outside “in the yard” twice a day and tried to convince Vargas to play soccer. She lied and said she hated soccer.

“The first three days, they would talk to me, but I would ignore them,” she said. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

Lights are left on at night, so many of the women stayed up all night and went to sleep after breakfast at 6 a.m. Vargas said she slept fitfully. She didn’t eat.

Vargas said she convinced herself if she didn’t buy food, she would soon be released.

“I went four days, three days without eating. I wanted to get out. I wanted to feel like I was going to get out so I wouldn’t buy it.”

Finally, Vargas gave herself a pep talk to work up the courage to shower.

Afterward, a woman told her she had made her soup. Several of the women had kept lettuce from the lunch Vargas slept through and mixed it with Ramen noodles. They put crushed chips on top.

“That touched my heart,” she said. “I realized they were all my age. We all wanted the same things. We all wanted this dream to be here (in America).”

Vargas then began regularly communicating with the other women. She was one of four of more than 70 women who spoke English. She would occasionally attempt to translate for them. She made several friends in detention. One woman gave her a rosary that belonged to her deceased father. Another gave her a book about trusting God. Both women were deported while Vargas was in detention.

On a particularly rough day, Vargas said she made a comment while in detention that she would be fine if she could have her phone and her clothes from home. She was quickly told from multiple women that, if they weren’t in detention, they would not have access to food or a shower. In that instant, Vargas said she felt humbled.

“You realize these people are just like you, they just haven’t gotten to where you are yet. They want the same things. Some of them want to go to school here, some of them just want a job where they can make money and have things, you know?”

The one bright spots of her detention, Vargas said, was getting to see her father and brother. Seven days after being at LaSalle, Vargas saw her father and brother through glass. They touched fingertips as her father called her “Champ.”

“I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me while I was there,” she said. “My dad, the whole time, he kept telling me he was proud of me … My brother was saying, 'I don’t want to go back. I’m going to miss you.'”

Vargas remembers doing yard work with her family when she was a child. Her brother would rake the leaves, and she would be in charge of holding the bag open for him.

“I wasn’t even useful at that so he would just tell me to stand there and look like I’m doing something when my dad would come around. Then my dad would leave, and he would do all the work. He always did everything for me.”

It’s hard for her to imagine life without them. Her father has been released, but his future and the future of her brother remains uncertain.

Once she was released, Vargas immediately went home and took a shower. Then, after meeting with her attorneys, she and friend Jordan Sanders went and got fast food for dinner.

While she is free from detention, Vargas said she very much still feels like a prisoner.

“I feel that everybody is telling me, 'you’re free, you should be happy,' but I really don’t have anybody to go home to,” she said.

The pressure she felt from her family as a little girl is still present, she said, but on a larger scale.

Vargas said she feels she has to help others in situations similar to her but she doesn’t know how.

She wouldn’t be where she is, she said, without the outpouring of support she’s received. Vargas said she received countless messages from other DACA recipients. Children from a church in Massachusetts sent her homemade cards.

“Everybody played a role in helping me be where I am today, and I am very grateful,” she said.

Vargas has a clear plan for where she wants to be in the next five years. She will be teaching math, “definitely married” and living near the beach with two cats and a dog.

“I want people to know I’m strong and I’m here wanting to do normal kid things just like everybody else,” she said. ”I want to be able to take normal steps, go to a ball game, stuff like that. I’m not anything that they’re not. We’re all the same. We’re all young and dumb sometimes. I’m 22. I want to be a 22 year old.

“We’re all here for the same reason, even Americans,” she said. “America is the land of the free. Who wouldn’t want to be here?”

Contact Sarah Fowler  at 601-961-7303 or sfowler@gannett.com . Follow her on Facebook  and Twitter .

Daniela Vargas, 22, of Morton, speaks to The Clarion-Ledger at her attorney's law office, Elmore & Peterson Law Firm, in Jackson Monday. Vargas, released Friday from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, was detained after speaking out at a news conference in Jackson.
Daniela Vargas, 22, of Morton, speaks to The Clarion-Ledger at her attorney's law office, Elmore & Peterson Law Firm, in Jackson Monday. Vargas, released Friday from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, was detained after speaking out at a news conference in Jackson.
Daniela Vargas, 22, of Morton, looks at a rosary she was given while detained at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana, at her attorney's law office in Jackson Monday. Vargas, released Friday from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, was detained after speaking out at a news conference in Jackson.