There had been an ICE raid on the restaurant where she worked. Unlike my dad, who was born in the States after his parents emigrated, my mother’s parents had crossed the border when she was three. Oakland was the only home she remembered, but that meant jack shit to the immigration officers.

She wouldn’t be deported for two more years. But that was the day it felt like they stole her from me. They detained her, held her for a five-thousand-dollar bail we couldn’t immediately come up with. For two months, she was held in county jail. I remember that time in flashes of pain. I try not to think about it, but images come up. Waking up with screaming nightmares, sweating through Spiderman pajamas. The strange kitchens and living rooms I’d go to after school, staying with a rotation of moms from church who offered to watch me so my dad could work extra shifts to put toward bond.

And the sterile room for visitors to the jail. Once a week, for an hour, timed so exactly, so harshly, so inhumanely. Seeing my mom, but knowing she wasn’t coming home with us. Watching the clock on the wall loom and click past the minutes, getting closer to when they would take her away again.

And even when we finally had enough saved and got her out, it hung over our heads, that clock. We were reminded of it every week, when she had to check in with ICE. Every minute we were moving toward the day of her hearing.

Two years after she was initially apprehended, her court date arrived. They said she had a right to a lawyer, but “at no cost to the state.” Since my parents still owed money to family and friends who helped with bond, that “right” didn’t mean much. There was no translator either, and this was before my mom had much English. The whole thing lasted five minutes, and then they deported her, sending her back to a country she had no memory of, to live with extended family she’d never met. Taking her away from me.

I had never been to an airport before that day. I’d always imagined going under different circumstances, heading on an adventure overseas or to Disney World. But I did not want to go there like this.

To stand in that big concourse, bustling and sterile, and say goodbye to my mom. I was at an age when I thought it wasn’t okay for boys to cry, and I had told myself on the way there I wouldn’t. But of course I did. I cried harder than I ever had, and ever have since. I screamed and clutched her jacket and, when the time came, had to be pulled away from her. At eighteen, I still have nightmares about that day.