On a warm June day in Nashville, Briana cradled her one-year-old son in the pediatrician’s waiting room. She was there for his routine checkup, expecting to talk about vaccines and growth charts.

Instead, as Briana bounced her baby on her lap in the exam room, Dr. Linda Powell leaned in and asked a question that stopped her cold: If you were taken away, who would take care of your baby?

It was a conversation Briana never imagined having in a doctor’s office even though as an undocumented immigrant, the concern hit close to home. Just weeks earlier, her husband — the family’s breadwinner — had gone to Walmart to buy sugar.

He never came home.

The next time she heard his voice, he was calling from a Louisiana immigration detention facility.

Briana, 32, had no warning. She learned later

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