Surzina Amy was only four years old when she came to the United States along with her parents. They traveled from place to place, hoping to gain legal status in the United States and finally settled in Orlando where they bought a gas station to help them reach their American dream.

But all their efforts seem futile. According to a source at the Florida Immigration Coalition, Surzina’s parents, Elahi Mohammed and Firoza Begum, were arrested last June and deported to Bangladesh a few days later. She and her two other brothers are now confined inside four walls at the Broward Transitional Center, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A coalition of immigrant rights advocates failed to convince immigration authorities to release them.

Surzina, 19, and her two brothers, Shamhul Rana and Mahbub Rumi, who are 25 and 29 years old respectively, have been in living in Orlando for 15 years.

In an open letter, Surzina makes a fervent appeal that Bangladeshi community members stand by them during this difficult situation. She writes of her hope to become a physician after graduating from the Timber Greek High School in Orlando, which will now come to nothing. All she wants is to be free.

When word of their deportation came out on February 23, Bangla Patrika contacted Pitia Nowell, their attorney, to verify the news. According to Nowell, although immigration authorities have made all preparations to deport the siblings, several human rights organizations and the Florida Immigration Coalition are fighting the deportation. Demonstration and rallies are being organized in protest against it regularly and a call has gone out to the Bangladeshi community to come forward.

Suvash Katil, a spokesperson for the Florida Immigration Coalition, said the parents, who sought political asylum 15 years ago, would not know anything about the deportation order against their children.

One son is married, and Surzina and her other brother were in school. The family and children were loved thought to be good people by neighbors and friends, but nothing of this good life remains. Their lives have turned into a nightmare, says Suvash Katil, they are victims of a sort of political persecution. No one is listening to their appeal.

Barbara Gonzales, a spokesperson for immigration authorities, said that orders for deportation for all three brothers were issued a long time ago and that they failed to respond, which is a violation of U.S. law. They were arrested because they evaded the law.