Taking care

XIOMARA WAS ALREADY HAVING LABOR PAINS WHEN SHE presented herself to U.S. Border Patrol officials to make a claim for asylum. She had fled gang violence in El Salvador six months earlier, working under the table in Mexico to afford bus tickets for her and her three young children to make it to the border. When she finally arrived, nine months pregnant and feeling contractions, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) offered to take her to a hospital. But she had heard about family separations and was worried about losing her kids if she were hospitalized, so instead she was sent back to the streets of Ciudad Juárez at night, alone with the children and with another on the way.

“It was sad, and I started to cry,” Xiomara, 33, tells TIME in Spanish. “I really thought they would let me through to the U.S.” Instead, she says, officials kept telling her “that I shouldn’t have