05/10/2026
Happy Mother’s Day! Today, we share Yajaira’s story, a mother whose strength and resilience remind us of all the ways our work changes lives.
Yajaira* left Venezuela with her two children, embarking on a dangerous journey to escape a government she opposed and described as corrupt.
Yajaira arrived at the border and was paroled into the U.S. She was able to receive Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a designation that allows for people from countries that the U.S. government considers unsafe and who entered the U.S. before a specific time to temporarily stay in the U.S.
Here, she met and fell in love with her partner and began to build a life with him. They had a baby and got engaged! However, life was upended when Yajaira was arrested by ICE and sent to immigration detention, despite her TPS.
In detention, she started feeling sick and asked to see a doctor, who told her she was pregnant.
While detained, her family was her motivation. “My husband and my children were my strength, my hope, my faith to not give up,” she shares. "I kept thinking of reuniting with my family. I had to fight, I had to give it my all, I had to pursue every avenue so my family could be reunited.”
Meanwhile, her husband researched who could help and found the Florence Project. Soon after, Brent Johnson and Sophia Elkihel, Florence Project attorneys, met Yajaira in detention.
Our team had to prepare quickly for Yajaira’s merits hearing. In court, we provided evidence and explained that Yajaira should not have been detained because of her TPS designation. The judge agreed.
After four months in detention, Yajaira remembers the day she was told she was being released. “Wow, it was the best news of my life,” she says.
Now, Yajaira is happy to be with her family and spend Mother’s Day by their side. She shares that more than anything, she just wants to “live calmly and have peace.”
We also acknowledge that this is not the case for everyone, and there are many mothers forcibly separated from their children. To the mothers who have unjustly been separated from their families to the mothers who have taken dangerous journeys for better opportunities for their children, we honor you today.
