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Showing content from https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2025/05/us/immigrant-mothers-cnnphotos-cec/ below:

A photographer followed moms through a dark time in their lives. She found something unexpected

A 17-year-old mom in rural Pennsylvania says she’s scared she’ll be separated from her 1-year-old son as immigration crackdowns intensify. But she tries not to let him see her fear. “He sees me really happy every day,” she says.

A mom holds her toddler’s hand as he chases bubbles on a suburban playground. Then she lifts him high above her head as the golden evening sun beams down.

On a stark cinderblock wall, their shadows paint a playful silhouette.

The effervescent images reveal a reality that caught Emily Whitney’s attention.

For more than a year, she’s been documenting the lives of immigrant moms in Pennsylvania. And what she’s seen, she says, is different from what many people may expect.

As a photographer, Whitney knows how important it is to find the light. Recognizing how the sun or a lamp are illuminating a scene can be the difference between capturing a powerful moment and missing it entirely.

E and her son chase bubbles at the park. She's one of several immigrant mothers photographer Emily Whitney has been following. Because the women worry speaking out could endanger their families, Whitney identifies them only by their initials and does not show their faces.

The 24-year-old says she fled a dangerous relationship in Mexico and then became pregnant in the US. Now she says she makes every decision with her son’s future in mind. She recently opened a bank account to save money for his education.

Whitney soon discovered that these women, in their own way, are finding the light, too.

As the Trump administration ratchets up its immigration crackdowns, the women Whitney photographs are at the center of one of the most contentious issues in American politics today. But even as more and more worries are weighing on them, she says, they’re discovering strength and beauty within themselves and their families.

“A lot has been taken from them … and yet there’s still so much joy in their everyday moments,” she says, “and their children, I think, are a huge part of that.”

Still, their fears are growing. Because they worry that speaking out could put their families at risk, Whitney identifies them only by their initials and doesn’t photograph their faces. Some have pending asylum cases and work permits. Others are undocumented immigrants living in the shadows.

Political arguments around these topics often follow predictable patterns. But through the mothers she’s photographed, Whitney says she sees more to the story.

In the heat of the immigration debate, it’s easy for many Americans to forget about the daily lives of millions of people that are at stake, Whitney says. “And I think on top of that,” she says, “so many people in the US also just fail to really see people who are different from them.”

That’s something Whitney says she hopes her photographs show.

Spending time observing these moms’ lives and hearing what they have to say, she says, has given her a window into a world many rarely see.

E smiles as she snuggles with her 1-year-old son on the couch and reads to him at bedtime.

She has kids’ books in English, and in Spanish. E is 24 years old and originally from Mexico. Her son is a US citizen, but she wants to make sure he learns about his Mexican heritage, too.

“We’ll see what language he gets first,” she tells CNN.

E herself speaks English and Spanish fluently. She was a baby when her parents first brought her to the US. She lived here for years before returning to Mexico for about a decade, and she says she came back to the US a few years ago to flee a dangerous relationship. She now works cleaning houses and cares for her son as a single mom.

These days, even during joyful moments with him, she says she’s also weighing a painful choice.

E says that lately she's been receiving reports in a group chat about ICE showing up in nearby towns and deporting immigrants.

Family members in Mexico gave E this rosary and jewelry. Cartel violence has been surging near her mom’s home, and E says it’s hard to know where to go to stay safe.

E is undocumented. Her mom, worried about the Trump administration’s threats of increased deportations, keeps asking E to send the little boy to live with her in Mexico before it’s too late.

“She says, ‘Imagine if you get deported, and what if ICE takes your son, and you can’t get him back?’”

The idea of that is devastating. So is the thought of sending him away.

E hasn’t decided what to do yet. For now, in case anything happens, she’s shared copies of her passport and her son’s passport with her brothers, who are US citizens, and she’s sharing her location with them, too.

“If I move out of Pennsylvania, it’s probably because I got deported,” she tells them.

The threat of family separation is also weighing on N. The 17-year-old from Guatemala says she’s all too familiar with what that feels like.

N now lives in rural Pennsylvania with her 1-year-old son, her father and several others. But seven years ago, she worried she’d never see her family again.

N was one of thousands of children the US government separated from their parents under the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. For two months, she says she was held in a shelter for unaccompanied minors, even though she’d crossed the border with her dad. When she asked questions and cried for her dad at the shelter, she says, officials there threatened to keep her in custody even longer.

Now, the fears and anxiety she dealt with then are creeping back into her mind.

“It’s going to happen again,” she tells CNN. “What about my baby? What about my dad? What if he doesn’t come back home?”

N knows she’s grown up so much since her first months in the US. But she says that doesn’t make this moment any easier.

“I’m almost 18. I know that I’m going to be an adult soon. But I still need my dad. I’m still a kid,” she says. “So it’s scary and I’m terrified to think about it.”

N had to face not only the stress of work responsibilities and teen pregnancy, but also postpartum depression. And yet, she still says, "I do really love being a mom.”

This drawing by A's nephew shows him in the US with his mother and stepfather, while his grandmother who remains in Ecuador stands outside. ICE recently detained his stepfather.

No matter what happens, N says she won’t let anyone take her child. And she won’t let the little boy see the fears she’s feeling right now.

“I don’t really show my feelings to him,” she says. “He sees me really happy every day.”

Another mom who Whitney’s been photographing, A, also says she's trying to hide her growing concerns from her children.

The 35-year-old isn’t just worrying about the 3-month-old newborn son who lives with her in a Pennsylvania city. When increasing violence and threats forced her to flee Ecuador and come to the US in 2023, she made the difficult decision to leave her two older children behind in her home country.

When they talk on the phone now, A senses they’re drifting even further apart. Her daughter especially seems to be changing fast. She was a child when A left. Now she’s a teenager.

“I feel so proud that she’s growing up and becoming a young woman, but given the life that we had in our country and our situation there, I’m very scared that something is going to happen to her,” she says. “I tell her to protect herself … there are so many bad people who are hurting our country — kidnappings, extortions and many more things.”

From a distance, A tells her older children a little bit about life in the US — about the colder weather, and about their new little brother.

“I just tell them that one day I’ll return for them, but I don’t know when it will be or what destiny has in store for us. But I want to bring my children here so much,” she says.

Leaving her older children behind in Ecuador was devastating, but she knew the harrowing journey to the US would be too difficult and dangerous for them. She’d hoped to find a safer way to bring them to join her once she got settled. With all the uncertainty these days, she wonders whether she’ll have the chance. She and her partner are both seeking asylum, but they're both waiting for court dates. It could be years before they have a chance to make their case.

Whitney met the women she’s been photographing well before Trump’s return to power. She took her first photos of N back in 2023, and met other women soon afterward, following some of them through their pregnancies.

What began as a more general project on motherhood evolved to focus on immigrant moms from Central and South America. As political rhetoric intensified during the runup to the 2024 election, Whitney began photographing subjects anonymously. Some women later backed out, afraid of sharing their stories. And even those who continue to invite her into their lives have become far more guarded since the project began, Whitney says.

“There’s a lot of hesitation to go do anything outside the house — the idea of barely being able to go to the grocery store, but still watching over your back that whole time, and cancelling other optional things just because you’re so worried,” she says.

N says she’s been spending more time inside her rural Pennsylvania home. “I’m scared to go for a walk, and I don’t want to go to the store,” she says. “It’s making me crazy.”

A says she hasn’t had much of a chance to explore the US since arriving a year and a half ago. As soon as she could, she got a job to help support her two older children in Ecuador.

As the women become warier of the outside world, Whitney says she’s spent more time inside with them and their children. It’s challenging to capture someone’s life without photographing their face, but Whitney says there are advantages to photographing emotionally rather than literally.

“I was interested in visualizing them in a way that shows not just what life looks like, but more of what it feels like, and what this time right now feels like,” she says.

Anonymous photography can be even more powerful, Whitney says, and less exploitive.

“Like, instead of photographing somebody weeping … maybe photographing a mom holding her baby. And you don't see their faces, but it's dark, and you see some light, and it kind of communicates the same feeling,” Whitney says.

Over the course of the project, Whitney has seen women who once were more open become isolated and cautious.

N says she now fears even ordering a pizza and bringing unwanted attention to her doorstep.

Recently immigration authorities detained her uncle near her home. He was deported a few days later. She says her routines have changed since then.

“I’m scared to go out for a walk, and I don’t want to go to the store. … It is making me crazy, because we don’t really know what’s going to happen next,” she tells CNN.

An 11-year-old boy who also lives in her house has been saying he’s scared to go out, too.

“Where’s the liberty here?” N says. “I thought this was a safe place. Now kids are scared to go to school.”

When they do go out, N says, they’ve seen troubling signs that times are changing.

In the parking lot of a local convenience store, N says she was shocked to see a Jeep emblazoned with a sticker that said: “ICE Volunteer.” She snapped a photo and shared it with others to spread the word.

Then, she says, she confronted the vehicle’s driver.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘Why did you put that on your car?’ And he was surprised that I knew English. And he said, ‘My cousin did it and it’s really good.’”

N says she told him she doesn’t think it’s good. Instead of fearing the small percentage of the population that’s undocumented, she says, he should be thanking the people who wake up at 3 a.m. to pick mushrooms that will later end up on his pizza.

“He just got really mad and closed his door,” she says.

On her cell phone, E gets regular messages in Spanish in a group chat warning of ICE officers in the area.

“Immigration is downtown”

“They took someone I know.”

“where did they take him?”

“sorry where was it”

“Who is it if you know”

Many of her family members, she says, have grown tired of the constant panic and decided to drive back to Mexico. Whenever she hears of a loved one leaving the US, she finds herself weighing a question: “Should I do the same thing?”

She says she’s still trying to figure out what to do.

E has been earning money cleaning houses with a friend. She hopes someday to go back to school and become a nurse so she can better provide for herself and her son.

E received letters of support from family in Mexico shortly arriving in the US. Recently, many people she knows have decided to leave the US rather than risk deportation. E wonders whether she should, too.

Through all the unknowns, N says that for her, one thing is certain: Her son needs her.

It’s why she heads to work at a mushroom farm every day hours before dawn.

It’s why she’s taking online classes to get her GED.

And it’s why she’s not giving up on her efforts to win asylum or get a special visa to stay in the US.

“I have to become something for him,” she says. “I have to do my best because of him.”

She doesn’t want her son to miss out on any opportunities. She wants him to have a great future in America, and she believes that if she works hard enough, he will.

“That,” she says, “is what goes on in my mind every day.”

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