You should sign this, says the blue-eyed man with a blue badge and a blue polo shirt. We are sitting on plastic chairs in a room that looks out on another room where a few people meet with family-member visitors but mostly they meet with lawyers and volunteers who visit. Sometimes they move us around, center to center. We all think they are trying to keep us as far away as possible from anyone we know. I am from Florida and I am in Texas. I knew I was going to Texas only when the officer escorted me to the American Airlines gate that said SAN ANTONIO. We are not in San Antonio. We are in some part of Texas where nobody hears us if we scream.

What is it? I say.

If you want to get out as quickly as possible, you should sign it, the blue-eyed man in the blue polo repeats. I look out the window.

In the visiting room there is a woman with a long braid down her back. She is speaking to a teenager across from her who shares her face. I imagine the woman speaking in Spanish and the teenager answering in English. I don’t know if this is true. It’s probably not true. They hold hands. I think of a photo I saw in a magazine on the table at a house I cleaned. Time. I was drawn by the photo on the cover. It was a woman, milk-coffee skin like mine, bars obstructing her face and the chalky yellow desert behind her. Tears ran down her face. She hugged a young girl through the bars. She hugged her daughter on the other side of the fence, on the US side. I wonder what does it feel like to hug someone through bars and do you look at your skin after and see the imprint, stripes down your belly, stripes on your chest? Your body, a fence.

What is it? I ask again. Do you have the form in Spanish?

No. You sign where the line is and you will leave detention faster.

Voluntary Departure, the form reads, and though I know some English, I do not know these words. There are a lot of numbers, a lot of codes. Sections 240A, 245, 248. ICE Form I-210. IJ, BIA, DHS.

What happens if I don’t sign it? I ask.

Oh, the man says. They’ll deport you anyways. You could stay here for who knows how long.

And what about my daughter?

These are questions for a lawyer.

I don’t have one. How do I get one?

The man touches his beard and gives me a soft smile that makes me want to sink into his arms. Help me, I want to say but I don’t.