
Undocumented in the Pandemic
Norma, an undocumented immigrant mother, tries to hold her family together after her husband Jesus is detained by ICE in a facility hit by a COVID-19 outbreak. The film follows her through the practical and emotional fallout of his detention: the phone calls from inside, the scramble to cover rent and childcare, and the fear that the virus spreading through the facility could reach him before any hearing does. An earlier altercation set the detention in motion, and the film traces how that single event cascades into a prolonged separation with no clear end date. Interviews and observational footage stay close to Norma's daily routine rather than zooming out to policy debate, so the immigration enforcement system and the pandemic register mainly through their effect on one household. It is a small, specific portrait of a family under two overlapping crises at once, immigration detention and a public health emergency neither institution seemed prepared to handle together.