Andres Mendoza Pablo said he still remembers the day in early 2018, while being held in an immigration detention facility near the U.S.-Mexico border, when the officials came to take his daughter away.

“She was only 4 years old, I couldn’t give her to them. She was just starting to talk, but in our dialect. She didn’t know Spanish or English,” Mendoza, who is Mayan from Guatemala and speaks an indigenous dialect called Mam at home, said in Spanish.

After he refused to give them his daughter, Mendoza said eight officials grabbed the pair and pushed them up against a wall. Some pried his arms open while others spread his legs, and finally, his daughter was pulled from his chest and taken away screaming.

For weeks, Mendoza did not know where his daughter Catalina was or when he would see

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