They Followed the Asylum Process. The System Punished Them Anyway.

Spokane, Washington: She was just a little girl who loved books.

Every morning, 10-year-old Karla Tiul Baltazar rode her bike to school in Spokane. Rain. Snow. Didn’t matter. She showed up anyway, backpack bouncing, English words rolling easily off her tongue, quietly teaching herself Japanese characters because she loved learning that much.

On the morning of January 9, her father walked her to class like he always did. He hugged her. He watched her disappear into the hallway at Logan Elementary. And then, before he could even make it home, his worst fear came true.

Federal immigration agents stopped him.

Arnoldo Tiul Caal has lived in Spokane for six years. No criminal record. A valid work permit. A Social Security number. An active asylum case with a court date already scheduled for 2027. He worked roofing jobs to keep food on the table. He checked in with immigration authorities again and again, doing what the system told him to do.

He was applying the right way.

But none of that mattered.

He sat for hours in a Border Patrol office, sick with panic, thinking about his daughter. A child born in Guatemala, alone in this country except for him. He begged. He cried. He pleaded.

“I cannot leave my daughter.”

For a brief moment, it seemed like mercy might exist. Agents let him pick Karla up from school. She got back in the car, confused, scared, clutching her small backpack, not knowing she was saying goodbye to everything she knew.

The next day, they were told to come back.

They packed two small bags each.

They were detained again.

Then they were sent—thousands of miles away—to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas.

Karla’s desk in Spokane is empty now.

Her classmates feel it. Her teachers feel it. The school board held a moment of silence for her absence. A silence heavy with confusion and grief, because how do you explain to children that one of their friends is gone—not because she did anything wrong, but because the adults in power decided rules mattered more than a child?

In detention, Karla worries about missing school. She wanted to finish elementary school. She worries about her Spanish, afraid kids will make fun of her because she thinks in English now. She worries because children shouldn’t have to be brave like this.

Her father worries about the overcrowding, the illness, the uncertainty. He worries about a judge—Veronica Marie Segovia—known for denying asylum at rates far higher than her peers. He worries because the system that told him to wait, to comply, to trust the process is now holding his child behind locked doors.

This is what breaks people.

We are told this is about law and order. We are told this is about borders. But look closely at this story and ask yourself the harder question:

Why are we going after asylum seekers who are following the rules?

Why are we detaining children who are enrolled in school, learning English, riding their bikes through American neighborhoods?

Why does “doing it the right way” still end with a 10-year-old sleeping in a detention facility, sick with stress, missing her books, her friends, her classroom?

We say we don’t separate families anymore—but now we cage them together and call it compassion.

This little girl was not a threat.
Her father was not hiding.
Their only mistake was believing the system would protect them if they played by its rules.

And that may be the most heartbreaking lesson of all.