BRING BEATA HOME
Beata Siemionkowicz.Is a mother, a 57-year-old hospice caregiver, a woman who spent her life easing dying strangers into their last breath, She has spent nights on a concrete floor in a Kentucky county jail because there weren’t enough beds. Her daughter, Claudia told me this the way you tell someone a fact you still can’t quite believe yourself.
Beata Siemionkowicz was in her daughter’s yard, tending the garden. Hands in the dirt, doing the most harmless thing a person can do. Then armed federal agents, faces covered, unnamed, unaccountable, closed in and took her.
No knock first.
No conversation.
Just gone.
Claudia found out by phone, the way you hear about a car accident.
Your mom’s gone. They took her.
Now do the thing this whole machine depends on you not doing.
Pretend this happened to your mom.
Picture your own mother on her knees in her garden on an ordinary afternoon. Picture the men in masks. Picture her looking up and understanding, in that half second, exactly what’s happening, and that there is nothing she can do about it. Picture her being walked to a van in front of her own fence, her own flowers, everything she built standing right there, useless, while she’s driven away.
Picture yourself getting that call.
That’s what happened to Beata Siemionkowicz eleven months ago.
And here’s what’s happened to her since, because your mother, if this were your mother, would still be living it right now.
She was driven hundreds of miles from home to a county jail she’d never heard of.
She was put in a unit that later had to be evacuated for mold.
She has gone without basic hygiene supplies because the jail didn’t keep enough on hand.
And on nights when the jail was full, she lay down on a bare concrete floor because there was no bed left for her.
Imagine your mother there tonight.
Not metaphorically.
Actually picture her.
The woman who packed your lunch.
The woman who sat up with you when you were sick.
The woman whose voice you still call when something goes wrong and you don’t know what else to do.
Now picture her on a concrete floor in a building four states away, and you can’t call her whenever you want anymore because there’s a phone schedule now, with a clock running down on how much longer the call gets to go on.
While all of this has been happening, here’s who Beata Siemionkowicz actually is, in case a jail cell is the only frame anyone’s offered you.
She’s the woman who brought her daughters along to clean car dealerships at midnight because she couldn’t afford a babysitter, and somehow made it feel like an adventure. Ice cream afterward, every single time.
She’s the woman who never missed a communion, a choir concert, or a graduation.
She’s the woman who stayed late scrubbing pews at St. Constance Catholic Church after big events, long after everyone else had gone home.
She’s the woman who put her daughter through esthetics school on a cleaning woman’s paycheck.
She’s the woman who spent her last years of freedom as a CNA hospice worker, bathing the dying, feeding the dying, holding the hands of people through the last hours of their lives because somebody has to, and almost nobody wants to.
One of her hospice patients was still alive when they took her out of that garden.
That woman kept waiting for Beata to come back.
She died a few months ago.
Still waiting.
That’s who’s on the floor tonight in Kentucky.
Somebody’s mother.
Somebody’s whole world, the way yours is to somebody.
Taken out of a backyard by masked men.
Her daughters, both born in this country, both American citizens, are fighting alone to bring her home.
One left nursing school because there was no time or money left for it.
Both are watching the house they grew up in slide toward foreclosure while their mother lies on a floor four hundred miles away.
If picturing your own mother in that garden, in that van, on that floor didn’t put a knot in your stomach, read this article again until it does.
That feeling is the whole point.
Call your Senators and Reps today. Demand that Beata be released. Ask specifically for a welfare check request. Tell them about the mold evacuation and being forced to sleep on the floor.
Tell her story. Share what has happened with as many people as possible.
Say her name and keep saying it.
Beata Siemionkowicz.
Let's help bring her home.
The linked Gofundme was created by Gabriela & Claudia Siemionkowicz to help support their fight in bringing home their mother, Beata Siemionkowicz. Beata was unlawfully detained and incarcerated this past August of 2025. ICE agents forcefully apprehended Beata while she was gardening at her residence. Since then, her daughter has been struggling during these hard times with her legal fees, bills, and expenses. The goal of this is to help raise awareness and resources to help Gabriela & Claudia navigate through these difficult, stressful, and expensive times.
Beata is a hard-working, single mother who was the sole provider for her household. She cares for her family by playing both father & mother roles, has helped put her daughters through school, and cares for the elderly. She came to America in 1995 with the father of her children. She holds a residency card plus a green card for the past 30 years. She has worked here, paid taxes, and has worked multiple jobs in order to raise her children independently.
She is being held in ICE’s custody without a shred of evidence on the allegations they are making against her. Besides these allegations, Beata and her family are aware of her two past minor theft charges, which she has owned up to. At the time, she was a new single mother struggling to make ends meet and did what she thought was right to help feed her babies. These past charges are from 2001 & 2003, and both thefts together equal less than $150. These minor charges should NEVER have come back to haunt her and her family in such an outsized and cruel way.
This is the longest Beata has been away from her daughters and is feeling the physical and mental burden of being detained in Campbell County, Kentucky. Please help us in showing Beata your support for this injustice and help us spread the word about what is being done to HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of legal immigrants.
Your subscription helps us put resources into fighting for people like Beata Siemionkowicz and her daughters. Closer to the Edge is a completely reader-powered publication. Without reader support, we wouldn't be here. Thank you for making what we do possible.
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