She gave birth, twice, in prison. We were there to witness the reunion with her kids.
Alan Chin for Insider
Despite a wave of reforms, babies born in prison can still be taken from their mothers. The negative impacts can be dramatic and long-lasting.
Silas was taken from his mother's arms soon after he was born, in October 2021. The same was true for his older brother Kaleb, who came into the world in 2009, just after their mother was imprisoned for a nonviolent drug offense.
This is a story about lost time. It's also a story about a fresh start.
On January 20, 2022, three-month-old Silas, 13-year-old Kaleb, and their two older siblings reunited with their mom, Raquel Esquivel. That day, Raquel (her family calls her Kelly) walked out of prison and boarded a flight to San Antonio, where she'd get to embrace her fiancé, Rick Gonzalez, and hold baby Silas for only the second time. After Insider profiled her last year, Kelly allowed us to chronicle her journey home. As she left prison, still wearing her prison-issue sweatsuit, the photographer Alan Chin raced to catch the reunion at the San Antonio airport. He found Rick scanning the crowd from his Buick, just in time to see Kelly rushing toward them.
"My heart was beating fast," Kelly said of the reunion. Pulling off her mask, she hugged and kissed Rick and then found Silas bundled up in back, in the car seat.
"Seeing him for the first time, man, it was..." She paused. "I just saw his face. His eyes, of course, you get lost in that intense gaze. You get caught in that moment, and you don't want to look anywhere else."
Alan Chin for Insider
What made this reunion even more poignant was that Kelly had been let out once before. In May 2020, she was part of a COVID-era experiment of 4,500 incarcerated people who were transferred to home confinement to thin overcrowding in federal prisons. With ankle monitors and multiple mandatory check-ins daily, they were given the chance to rebuild their lives and reconnect with loved ones.
And Kelly both rebuilt and reconnected. She lived with her kids and managed to find a job she loved. Things felt so settled that she allowed herself the space to date Rick and fall in love. Soon, they were engaged and expecting a baby. Sure, starting a new family would take time away from her three kids, but she felt OK about it because she had time. Kelly, and everyone around her, believed that her home confinement would turn into a permanent homecoming. She was nearing the end of her sentence, and things were going well.
She thought she had nothing but time.
But then, in May 2021 — a year after her release — Kelly was ordered back to prison. The Bureau of Prisons had audited her ankle monitor and determined she'd traveled outside her approved radius and missed a check-in. (Kelly and her then-employer dispute this.) She was several months pregnant.
On her first day in prison, Kelly applied to be part of MINT, or Mothers and Infants Nurturing Together, a program that allows some people who are serving time to give birth and raise their babies in a halfway house for up to a year. She was rejected with a fuzzy explanation: the prison had agreed, but the BOP (which declined to answer Insider's questions about the matter) denied the request.
Alan Chin for Insider
Kelly had ended up in a prison where COVID-19 was still rampant, and where a pregnant woman had died of the coronavirus just a few months earlier. Kelly feared for her baby's health, and worried about how he'd cope without his mother.
She was also haunted by the feeling that her relationship with Rick had taken her away from her older kids, Dain, Jordan, and Kaleb. "I got out, got in a relationship, got pregnant. I didn't even give them time," she said. "It's something that consumed my mind. Some nights I wouldn't be able to sleep, 'cause I was like: 'I'm so wrong. Am I ever going to learn? Am I ever going to make the right decision?'"
Silas James was born October 18, 2021, in a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas. After a brief stay in the neonatal intensive care unit, Rick was called to the hospital and took him home. Kelly went back to prison.
Three months later, Kelly learned her release date was imminent.
Alan Chin for Insider
Alan Chin for Insider
There is no reliable count of the number of babies born behind bars each year. One study, from 2016-17, found that at least 4% of incarcerated women were pregnant at the time of their sentencing. Babies can suffer dramatic and traumatic repercussions when they're separated from their mothers and are at heightened risk of cognitive delays, depression, and anxiety.
At the airport, when Kelly finally got to cradle her son, Silas was no longer the wrinkly, sleepy newborn she'd given birth to. "He looked directly in my eyes like he knew exactly who I was," Kelly said. "He knows his mom for sure, and I was kind of nervous about that!"
A short while later, the three of them were all tucked into a booth at an Applebee's. They cut an unremarkable sight — an adoring couple, giddy with their three-month-old. And yet, this was Kelly's first meal as a truly free woman.
Rick posted a few of Alan's pictures on social media, and supportive likes and comments flowed in.
Next stop: Kelly's 16-year-old daughter, Jordan, who lives with her father in San Antonio.
Alan Chin for Insider
During her long incarceration, Kelly struggled to stay connected to her children. For one thing, FCI Waseca, the prison where she spent several years, was in Minnesota, nearly 1,300 miles from her kids.
"So many times I'm like: 'Man I'm just going to let them live their life, you know, and they can just forget about me. I'm just going to stop calling.' So many times, I thought that, but I never did," she said.
Some of the women Kelly met in prison advised her it was foolish to try to exist in two places at once: "They would tell me: 'You can't do your time that way.' But I was like: 'I don't know no other way — my kids are out there. That's my life.'"
Alan Chin for Insider
Back on the road, Silas had gotten fussy, and Kelly reached to make a bottle. She'd only ever breastfed, so she asked Rick for the ratio. "One scoop for every 2 ounces," he replied. Kelly mixed while Rick drove.
"Oh my goodness, there you go," she told Silas, feeding him for the first time. The car grew quiet.
From there, it was straight west to Del Rio, the Texas border town where Kelly grew up and would now live again.
Alan Chin for Insider
When Kelly returned to prison after her year out, Rick tried to stay in close touch. But Kelly, feeling angry and isolated, didn't want visitors. Both acknowledged their phone calls were often strained. As Kelly put it, she felt cold in prison and couldn't be "all lovey-dovey."
From the outside, Rick was the one to coordinate with criminal-justice-reform advocates helping Kelly with her case. Now, with Silas behind her in the car, Kelly was talking to some of those people for the first time, thanking them, as they called to celebrate her release.
"How is baby Silas?" said Amy Povah, of Can-Do, an organization that seeks clemency for nonviolent drug offenders.
"I mean, we're getting acquainted," Kelly said.
"Oh, Raquel, you know what? Enjoy every single minute of it," Povah said, calling the system that had separated them "a monster."
It's mind-blowing to see how much time was lost.
As they approached Del Rio, Kelly got a call from her oldest son Dain, who's now 18. He wanted to know whether his girlfriend could be with them at the apartment when Kelly walked in.
Introducing your girlfriend to your mother can be a delicate task for any teenager, and there was a slight tremor in Dain's voice. It was another moment that was both normal and extraordinary, as Kelly prepared to reenter her eldest child's life once again.
Sure, Kelly said.
Kelly and Dain had maintained a close bond over the years, and living together again during her home confinement, they'd found a happy rhythm. Her sudden reimprisonment left him utterly dazed. "I was like, 'Now what do I do?'" he said. He took his sadness to Kelly but found it to be "a lot harder having to talk to her through the phone about everything," he said.
Now, they'd have another shot. A week earlier, Dain had moved into the apartment with Rick and Silas, as they all awaited Kelly's return. What Dain craved, he said, was "just a good talk with my mom." Face to face, he clarified.
"I haven't had that in a while."
Alan Chin for Insider
Finally, they reached Del Rio, and Kelly got a first look at her new home.
Back in May 2021, Rick and Kelly were five days from moving into their first apartment together when Kelly was re-imprisoned. Rick moved in alone, and this was where he'd brought Silas. Until now, they'd never woken up together, or shared a home.
Now, as Rick toured Kelly through each room, Kelly made a beeline for the closets.
Alan Chin for Insider
Alan Chin for Insider
Alan Chin for Insider
She teased Rick and Dain for not cleaning the bathrooms to her standard. But, overall, she seemed pleased.
"They say you don't know somebody until you've lived with them," Kelly said. "So, a lot of prayers!" She laughed and then added: "I really do believe that Rick is the one for me. I believe that with my heart, I do."
The sun had set. The next stop was the home of Kelly's parents, Veronica and Rosendo, where Kaleb has lived all his life. Kaleb was just getting home from gymnastics practice and welcomed his mother with a backflip.
Alan Chin for Insider
Kelly delivered Kaleb while handcuffed to a hospital bed, and he was taken from her the day he was born. (The practice of shackling federal prisoners during labor was banned, with some exceptions, in 2018. It's still allowed in about a dozen states.)
"I could not even hold him once I gave birth," Kelly said, "I saw him for a couple of minutes and then they took him away."
He went home with Veronica, who's played the role of his mother.
Alan Chin for Insider
Alan Chin for Insider
While thankful that all her children were loved, safe, and provided for when she was in prison, Kelly was aware she was rejoining a program already in progress. With Kaleb, especially, she said, "I don't know how our relationship will turn out."
"He definitely knows me as mom, but how can I explain it?" she said later. "He never comes to me for permission for anything, because he doesn't live with me."
Alan Chin for Insider.
Alan Chin for Insider
Alan Chin for Insider
That night, back at the apartment, Kelly lay down in her own bed, tucked between Silas and Rick.
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "It was so surreal. Having Rick on one side and Silas on the other, taking up all the space! And Dain down the hall. You know, it was just … oh, man, I couldn't have asked for a better homecoming. It was amazing."
Nearly a year later, Kelly is working as a shipping clerk for Toter, a company that makes trash cans. She started as a temp and has converted to full time. "401(k), the works," she says.
Dain graduated from high school and recently got a job at Toter, too, working alongside his mom. Jordan visits from San Antonio every two weeks, and she'll spend her Christmas vacation with Kelly and her brothers. Silas is walking and bats his eyelashes ("making ojitos," Kelly laughs) at all the big kids and adults who surround him.
"I'm at a good place in my life, and my kids are at a good place," she says. "We're making memories."
On July 15, 2022, Kelly and Rick married at the Del Rio courthouse. It was Rick's birthday.
Alan Chin for Insider
"It was just us: me and my kids, and him. It was awesome, just perfect," Kelly says. "After everything we've been through, we did it."
But even when things are great, and family life flows naturally, one of the older kids will recall something that happened when they were 8 or 9. "I'm like, 'Wow, I missed so much,'" Kelly says. "It's mind-blowing to see how much time was lost."
If there's a lesson here, she thinks it's that society needs to see what separating incarcerated moms from their babies and little kids does to families, and to find a better way.
"It takes an army to make a change. People get complacent, and they accept what is, and you stop fighting," Kelly says. "But people need to keep fighting."
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