A Valid Green Card Did Not Stop ICE From Taking Their Mother
Beata Siemionkowicz has been in ICE custody for eight months despite a valid green card, no violent criminal history, and daughters fighting to bring her home.
Two suburban women are facing Mother’s Day without their mother because ICE took her.
Beata Siemionkowicz is a Polish immigrant who came to the United States in 1995. Her daughters say she has a valid permanent resident card, commonly called a green card, that does not expire until later in 2026. She has no violent criminal history. She has a family fighting for her. She has daughters who still need their mother home.
ICE has kept her in custody since August 2025.
That is the center of this story. Not a slogan. Not a statistic. Not an “alien number.” A mother was taken from her family, held for eight months, and left inside a detention system while her daughters prepared for Mother’s Day without her.
Claudia and Gabriela Siemionkowicz are trying to bring attention to what happened to their mother. According to CBS News Chicago, Beata was first detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August while helping tend Claudia’s garden while Claudia was at work. Claudia said she received a call and heard the words no daughter should have to hear: “Your mom’s gone, they took her.”
That sentence is the truth ICE paperwork tries to bury. A daughter did not experience this as an administrative process. She experienced it as disappearance.
Beata’s family says she came to the United States with a visa in 1995 and now has a green card. The card, according to her daughters, remains valid until later in 2026. Yet ICE took her anyway. The public is told over and over that immigration crackdowns are aimed at “the worst of the worst.” Beata’s case exposes how empty that line becomes when the person inside the cage is a 56-year-old mother with documents, family, and no violent criminal history.
DHS has pointed to two petty theft offenses from the early 2000s as part of the reason for detaining her. Her daughters say Beata already took accountability for those crimes. They also say she had been working to pass her citizenship test.
That matters because this is how old records get turned into new punishment.
This is not public safety. This is ICE reaching decades backward, pulling old nonviolent offenses into the present, and using them to justify tearing a mother away from her daughters. A petty theft record from more than 20 years ago should not become a blank check for indefinite cruelty. It should not become the reason a family spends Mother’s Day wondering why their mother is still locked away.
The Trump administration sells these crackdowns as protection. Beata’s daughters are telling the public what that protection looks like from inside the family it destroyed.
“Yes, they’re getting criminals off the street,” Claudia told CBS News Chicago, “but they’re also taking innocent 56-year-old moms.”
That is the fracture line.
The government says “criminal.” The daughter says “mom.”
The government says “alien number.” The daughter says “we are a family that belongs together.”
ICE depends on that reduction. A person becomes a number. A mother becomes a file. A family becomes collateral damage. A green card becomes something ICE can move around instead of something that should have protected her from being swallowed by the deportation machine.
Beata is being held at the Campbell County Detention Center in Kentucky, a facility that also holds people jailed for non-immigration-related offenses. Her daughters described conditions involving mold, bugs, and a lack of feminine products. They said detainees were moved to a new unit because of mold.
That is not an immigration “process.” That is punishment before resolution.
Beata’s daughters are not asking the public to ignore the record. They are asking the public to see the whole record. Their mother had old petty theft offenses. Their mother also had documents. Their mother also had no violent criminal history. Their mother also had daughters. Their mother also had a life. Their mother also had a future she was still trying to build.
ICE does not get to erase all of that and leave only the part that helps justify detention.
The Trump deportation machine works by flattening people. It strips away family, history, accountability, time, and context until a human being becomes easier to cage. It does not need Beata to be “the worst of the worst.” It only needs enough paperwork to make her detention look official.
That is how families get broken in public while the government calls it enforcement.
Beata’s case was not even part of Operation Midway Blitz, according to CBS News Chicago. She was arrested before that operation began. But her case still shows the same logic behind the wider crackdown: take people first, justify the harm later, and force families to fight through a system designed to exhaust them.
Her daughters are doing what families are forced to do when the state takes someone they love. They are making their mother visible.
They are saying her name.
They are pushing back against the language that turns a mother into a case number.
They are telling the public that Beata Siemionkowicz is not a statistic. She is not a talking point. She is not a campaign line. She is their mother.
And this Mother’s Day, that truth should matter.
A country that lets ICE take a mother with a valid green card, hold her for eight months, point to old petty theft offenses, and leave her daughters begging for her return is not protecting families. It is teaching families that documentation may not be enough, accountability may not be enough, time may not be enough, and humanity may not be enough once ICE decides to take someone.
That is why this case belongs in the public record.
Because every time the Trump administration says it is targeting “the worst of the worst,” families like Beata’s are forced to prove they are human enough to be seen.
Beata’s daughters should not have to spend Mother’s Day explaining that their mother is more than an immigration file. They should not have to remind the public that a green card holder with no violent criminal history should not be locked away from her family for months. They should not have to beg for the return of the woman they call when they need help, guidance, comfort, or home.
But that is what ICE has done.
It took a mother.
It left daughters waiting.
It turned old nonviolent offenses into a fresh separation.
It reduced a family to paperwork and forced them to fight their way back into the public eye.
That is not safety.
That is not justice.
That is not “the worst of the worst.”
That is Trump’s deportation machine doing what it was built to do: take people, cage them, strip away context, and make families fight to prove the obvious.
Beata Siemionkowicz belongs with her daughters.
And ICE must be held accountable for every mother it takes, every family it breaks, and every person it reduces to a number.
Americans Against ICE exists to document exactly this kind of harm: the families ICE separates, the people it cages, the records it distorts, and the human beings it tries to reduce to case numbers.
Beata Siemionkowicz’s daughters are fighting to bring their mother home. Stories like hers need public pressure, documentation, and independent reporting that does not soften what ICE is doing.
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Sources: CBS News Chicago: Polish mother Beata Siemionkowicz detained by ICE in Kentucky despite valid visa.