Translated Letter to United States Congress (2019):

I look around, and I see American flags. They hang all over the detention facility, plastered on the walls like victory banners. Every night, as I try to sleep with the 24-hour lights glaring down at me, I gaze at these flags. I gaze at these flags while my back hurts from sleeping on the floor above this “beloved” American soil, as my newborn child shivers beside me. I believed in you, America. I had to believe, as I trekked for miles and miles and miles, carrying my child, to reach the United States. I came here to seek asylum, to seek refuge from the horrors I faced in my home country, Honduras. And when I arrived here, asking to seek asylum and was thrown into this cage, I lost faith. I am a woman caged inside a chainlink fence within a warehouse, yet I am in the country of freedom, the country that preaches “liberty and justice for all.” My child is cold; her toes are blue, and I was refused another blanket. I haven’t been allowed to shower. I hear children crying, screaming for their parents all throughout the night. Yet I write to you as I attempt to keep an ounce of hope within me. I need you to hear my voice. America must hear my voice. To hear my story, my voice, my struggle is to humanize me, which disrupts this inhumane system of cruelty that relies on my existence as alien and nameless. So listen to me; my life depends on it. My child’s life depends on it. The lives of all of the refugees coming to America to seek asylum depends on it. I beg you to turn towards justice over complicity, love over cruelty. And remember this: you may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.