A family from southwestern Africa that was living in Washington state while seeking asylum said they were detained by immigration officials for nearly a month in a windowless cell.

The family had feared deportation and tried to cross from Blaine into Canada. They then spent 24 days from April 26 to May 20 in a single holding room.

OPB talked with one adult female member of the family, the mother of four children who is in the third trimester of pregnancy. She said she wanted to raise awareness about the conditions that she, her partner and their children faced.

“It wasn’t really a detention,” she told OPB in a conversation conducted with an interpreter. “It was more like a jail cell. And there were six of us.”

OPB is not naming the family or their country of origin because the family s

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