With a forlorn smile, Dailemás Natalí Montana Andrade watched her 6-year-old daughter play with other children inside St. Peter’s Church in Midtown. Shouldering the weight of the world, she sat with a dozen other families awaiting immigration counsel.
At 27, Montana Andrade has been fighting two battles: one for herself to achieve the American Dream, and the other for the return of one of her beloved daughters.
The Venezuelan native and mother living in Queens has spent years navigating the legal framework of court appearances inside 26 Federal Plaza as she sought to obtain a permanent foothold in the Big Apple, a tedious and arduous process that she hoped would culminate on Feb. 10.
Nerves and uncertainty filled the waiting room on the 12th floor, where Montana Andrade waited for a judge to hear her case. While she waited, she mingled with other families who also awaited their fate. She rose from her seat and lifted a baby, cradling the child as if it were her own.
“I hope I can come back someday and take a class, at least on Saturdays, or something, so that when my daughters grow up, they have someone to look up to,” said Montana Andrade.
Just one week prior, she appeared in the same courtroom, on the same floor where masked ICE agents lurked in the hallways of the 12th floor waiting to arrest their “targets,” the name federal agents give to immigrants just like her as they attend their legally mandated court proceedings.
On Feb. 2, she left the courthouse in tears — in the arms of immigrants rights advocate Father Fabian Arias — afraid of what the future may hold, for she is not only taking on this fight for herself.
Montana Andrade is also fighting to regain custody of her 9-year-old daughter from Child Protective Services after her abusive ex-boyfriend was detained by ICE last month.
She fled from Venezuela to Ecuador and then Mexico after receiving threats from local gangs. Following a period of homelessness, and what she described as severe psychological and physical abuse by the father of her two daughters.
While in Mexico, Yerson González Serrano, the father of Montana Andrade’s children, took the older daughter from her in what she described as an abusive situation and crossed to the United States on Feb. 2, 2023. She decided to seek asylum in the United States with her remaining six-year-old girl.
With her daughter in tow, she entered the United States, where they traveled to NYC for her first court date for her asylum application on May 16, 2023. Montana Andrade settled into the New York City shelter system while seeking to reconnect with her oldest daughter.
Aides with U.S. Dan Goldman’s office were able to help determine that Serrano had been detained by ICE in Albany in early January and remains held in Buffalo, where he is set for deportation. Meanwhile, her child was removed to state Child Protective Services.
“This situation with my daughter has left me a little broken, although I don’t give up and I keep going day by day because I have another little girl and I want both of them to see me in good spirits,” Montana Andrade said in tears. “But honestly, inside it’s affecting me a lot, I want to be with my daughter.”
Following her court appearance in 26 Federal Plaza on Feb. 10, she was given a final trial court date for herself to prove her need for asylum, and was required to file additional paperwork by the end of the day. She was immediately whisked to Goldman’s Lower Manhattan office, where immigration volunteers aided her in filling out the legal documents.
Queens immigrant fights to reunite with daughter
Then there was her other legal fight: Reuniting with her 9-year-old daughter.
Montana Andrade shared that her youngest daughter also yearned to be reunited with her sister, even drawing a picture of the family together again at the Feb. 10 court appearance.
“I want to be with my daughter. I don’t want to be separated from my children anymore. I truly wish I could move forward into the future and that they could grow up in a good environment, become professionals, and enjoy having access to opportunities. Children don’t deserve so much suffering,” Montana Andrade said.
In the days since, Montana Andrade revealed that ACS finally turned her lost daughter over to her on a temporary basis, not only allowing the mother to reunite with the girl, but also the girl’s sister.
On Feb. 15, Montana Andrade was all smiles after her family was finally made whole.
After enduring the ache of separation and the uncertainty that came with it, she now wakes up each day to the sound of her girls together, talking and laughing, rebuilding the bond that distance once strained.
Watching her older daughter embrace her younger sister, Andrade is filled with gratitude and relief, emotions she says are difficult to put into words. The reunion has brought a renewed sense of peace into their home, turning what was once a period of hardship into a chapter defined by healing, resilience, and the simple joy of being together.
Now she says she must focus on March 13, when she must once again return to 26 Federal Plaza in hopes of obtaining her asylum status to remain in the United States with her two daughters.
It was Montana Andrade’s heartfelt story that prompted Alexander Carrion of the Carrion Law Firm to take her case pro bono.
“I can tell you that of all the cases I’ve handled, the trauma here goes back at least as far as her early childhood. There are family feuds involved, as well as arbitrary arrests by the Venezuelan government. She also appears to have experienced losses related to gangs affiliated with the Venezuelan government. So we have at least three or four separate grounds for asylum in this case. If this were a year or two ago, I could almost guarantee that, at least in theory, this case had enough merit to win,” Carrion told amNewYork.
He added that the sheer amount of trauma Montana Andrade has endured is a story he has heard far too often from South American women facing abuse, gang violence, and other threats, which he believes is all more than enough reason to grant asylum.
However, under the current administration, even the most clear-cut asylum cases have become more difficult.
“The most tragic part of this … is that these details don’t factor into whether she can stay in the country,” Carrion said. “Unfortunately, our immigration laws are very cold toward individual circumstances. That’s why so many parents of young children are separated from them and put into detention while awaiting deportation.”
Carrion explained that domestic violence victims from South America previously had a strong chance of winning asylum. During the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security recognized that local police and civilians in many South American countries were often unwilling to help women facing violence due to a deeply ingrained machismo culture, which dictated that a woman must stay with her partner under any circumstances.
Under the Trump administration, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that domestic violence victims from South America could no longer reliably claim asylum. The Biden administration briefly reversed this, but the policy was reinstated six months ago.
“So just by that example alone, we’ve lost a well-established avenue for asylum that was recognized by case law and precedent,” Carrion said.
However, Montana Andrade is not only a victim of domestic violence; she has also been targeted by a Venezuelan police officer and can claim political asylum.
“The only thing I want is to get my documents back in order, work, and not disappoint the people who, with so much love and effort, made this possible,” Montana Andrade said, thanking Father Fabian and everyone who helped to make this happen. “It is a great blessing that I am very grateful for. I only wish to support them and help them make their dreams come true.”
