U.S. citizen teens left behind when ICE deported their parents

After their mom and dad were deported, two Fort Worth teens went nearly a year before seeing their parents.

Two Fort Worth teenagers, suddenly on their own. For nearly a year, 19-year-old Dulce Zepeda has been raising her 13-year-old sister, Maria, in the months since their parents were arrested by ICE and then deported.

When NBC 5 Investigates first met Dulce and Maria in April, they were living in a Fort Worth apartment complex. Dulce, cooking, driving her sister to middle school, working at a local McDonald’s, and selling her mother’s jewelry, she said, to help pay bills.

“You never know whenever is the last hug that you’re going to have from your parents. You don’t know, you’ll never know how stressful and hard life is without them,” Dulce told NBC 5 Investigates.

The girls are U.S. citizens and legally entitled to remain in the country. But some immigration advocates say their case is a stark example of the precarious situations facing thousands of U.S. citizen children whose parents have been detained during the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.

Critics said rapid deportations of parents have led to what they describe as a new form of family separation, and they argue recent changes in ICE policy have increased the risk that parents will be deported, even before they are able to make plans for the care of their children.