Readers React: A child’s lifelong feeling of abandonment after the deportation of an immigrant parent

To the editor: The cry, “Who will do my hair when you’re not here?” said by Mayra Machado’s daughter Dyanara, is an expression of abandonment suffered from every angle of this 11-year-old girl.

The intimate connection of mother and daughter has been broken due to Mayra’s past deportation and her present imprisonment because she reentered the United States illegally to be reunited with her children. This simple act of communicating “who will do my hair” reveals the traumatic emotional and psychological separation experience at such early age that will prevail throughout her entire life.

Dyanara won’t have a replacement mother to “style her hair,” just like she won’t have her mother to “style her life.”

Blanca Aurora Montes, Lake Balboa

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To the editor: In this sob story du jour, convicted felon Mayra Machado is in anguish over separation from her children after being deported.

With the exception of being brought illegally into the United States as a child years ago, all her problems were of her own making. With forging checks to make her car payments, an automobile accident and an unpaid traffic ticket, she would have been better off taking public transportation.

Nancy Grubb, Fontana

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