Day six; what a week.  Again today, there were moments of joy and sorrow.

Perhaps the hardest moment I've had all week was today, sitting with a women who had received a negative decision in her case.  She can appeal, but this is going to make it harder for her to progress to a successful asylum case.  Before that decision, she had decided to let her darling three year old daughter live with her brother here in the states.  I didn't look into the reason, but this child is at liberty to leave.  Now the mother has to decide whether to let her baby girl have a better life outside of detention, with the distinct possibility that she, the mother, may be deported.  Then, would she take her daughter from this new life, back to the life they were fleeing?  Her sobs in my arms, with her sleeping baby in hers, will re-surface in the days to come, I am sure, while she ponders this awful dilemma.

A little spitfire came to visit us today!   She is 11 and brilliant.  You may have seen the letter she wrote to President Obama that danced around the internet a month or so ago.  She made many great points, not the least of which was that the children must have a school.  Well, they do, now, but for only an hour a day.  This little girl wants to keep up with her French and English!  Meeting her on the heels of the Nobel Peace Prize award this week put me in awe of the strength of the women of the future.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/read-letter-11-year-old-migrant-detention-wrote-president-obama