Here's What Happened to One Family After ICE Took Dad
By Kenny Wassus
When ICE, as part of a wider crackdown on immigration by the new administration, tried to deport Indra Sihotang, he knew he couldn’t board the plane to leave. With a wife and four U.S.-born sons — and all of them depending on him as their financial provider — he refused.
After he defied ICE, Sihotang was kicked and beaten, resulting in injuries, his wife Risma Fadersair says, resulted in hospitalization.
A Christian and a welder with a clean record, never having been arrested or charged with a crime in the United States, Indra Sihotang has been in the U.S. since 2003, when he entered on a visitor’s visa. In 2005, he filed for asylum (in his home country, Indonesia, Christians are persecuted for their beliefs, in a predominantly Muslim country); in 2016, his application was denied. Since then, Sihotang had remained in the U.S., on an order of supervision, until September 7, 2017, when he was detained during a routine check-in.
Now with no income and four boys — aged 8, 9, 5, and 3 — one of whom has Down syndrome that requires intense therapy, the Sihotang family is in crisis. This short is a look at how their life has been upturned since ICE took their dad, and the lengths they go to see him.
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https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/07/heres-what-happened-to-one-family-after-ice-took-dad.html