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As I write this, Armelle Bondonga Bradshaw has not seen her husband or held her 19-month-old baby in over two weeks.
On Aug. 12, Armelle and her husband, Terrance Bradshaw, voluntarily appeared for what was supposed to be a final interview in the process of obtaining her marriage-based green card. Instead, immigration agents separated the family and took Armelle into custody.
Armelle did exactly what Americans who favor stricter immigration enforcement say immigrants should do: She followed the law. She showed up, followed the process and did the paperwork. Now she is detained. She is sitting in a detention center while her husband is home trying to comfort their child, who cries when he hears his mother’s recorded voice.
Armelle was 9 years old when she landed in Maine with her family from the Democratic Republic of Congo. They arrived here legally on a visitor visa. While they were visiting, violence in their home country erupted. Their home was invaded, family members were assaulted, and her father’s colleague was murdered. Armelle’s parents made the difficult decision to seek asylum in the United States.
They changed their legal status from visitors to asylum-seekers.
Then, for the next decade, while the family navigated our complicated American immigration system, one that is fraught with political tensions, Armelle grew up. She went to school. She made friends. She found mentors. She built a life.
Armelle came to Louisville, Kentucky, amid the COVID-19 pandemic as a high school student. In the wake of Breonna Taylor’s murder, she was inspired by the social justice movement. Alongside classmates, she helped found Future Ancestors, an organization that puts young people at the center of community action.
For six years, she and her peers organized the Race4Justice, raising money for community nonprofits while honoring Breonna Taylor’s life. Participants run or walk 26 laps on the track at the Norton Healthcare Sports and Learning Center - one lap for each of Breonna Taylor’s 26 years.
Armelle graduated from high school and kept doing the work. She mentored younger students. She helped keep Future Ancestors youth-led. She also returned to Waggener High School as a substitute teacher, working alongside the educators who had once taught her. The people who helped raise her were now her colleagues.
This is what growing up in America looked like for Armelle. The people who helped raise her became the people she came back to serve.
She also fell in love with an American citizen, Terrance Bradshaw. She and Terrance had a son and got married. They were building a family. Armelle’s life is unmistakably intertwined with the country that raised her.
That is how she ended up in the immigration office on Aug. 12. Her marriage had opened another pathway to permanent residency in the United States.
It should have been one more step to solidifying her immigration status. But instead, Armelle was separated from her family. She appeared voluntarily for her scheduled meeting. She was not hiding from immigration authorities or attempting to evade the system. She has no criminal history.
What happened to Armelle is part of a growing pattern. People are being told to follow the process, then discovering that showing up puts them in handcuffs anyway.
So what exactly is America asking of people like Armelle now?
She may have been born in Congo, but Armelle is American. America raised her, she has spent most of her life here, and now she is being told that she somehow doesn’t belong. Not by the teachers she learned from. Not by the students she has mentored. Not by the nonprofits working alongside her in the community. Certainly not by the husband who loves her. But by a government that does not see her.
What happened to Armelle should make anyone who believes in following the legal process ask themselves what we mean when we say, “Do it the right way.” If we want people to trust the legal process, we cannot make following that process a trap.