Herrera said 10-year-old Karla is stressed thinking of the school she’s missing.
“She would at least want to finish elementary school,” Herrera said.
Spokane Public Schools board member Nikki Otero Lockwood held a moment of silence at Wednesday’s board meeting after she learned of the young student’s detention.
“The child’s absence is deeply felt by classmates, educators and a school community that is grieving and trying to make sense of this loss,” Lockwood said.
Karla is an “amazing” girl and left everyone with that impression, Herrera said. She came to Spokane at 4 years old and eventually enrolled in school and learned English. She loves books, Herrera said, and was teaching herself to write Japanese characters.
Herrera said Karla “was saying goodbye to everything she knew with that kind of innocent certainty only a child has.”
Karla is now one of the 1,700 children in custody since family detention centers reopened in April.
Tiul Caal will likely remain in detention until his next court hearing slated for March 9 under immigration Judge Veronica Marie Segovia.
Segovia, who was appointed as an immigration judge in November 2023, is known for denying immigrants asylum in the U.S., and more often than other immigration judges across the board.
Segovia denied a Turkish immigrant’s asylum case in 2025, despite the Department of Homeland Security stating the immigrant had met the legal requirements for asylum, according to a report by the Guardian. Segovia suggested the immigrant’s rape, torture and beatings he experienced in Turkey were “not as bad” as the report states.
Segovia saw 193 cases in the first 11 months of 2025. She granted other forms of relief for eight of those cases, but only granted full asylum for one of them, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center.
Her asylum denial rates are also significantly higher than her counterparts, data shows. Segovia denied 36% more asylum claims than other immigration judges across the U.S. in that same time period.
The Texas processing center is crowded, Tiul Caal told Mesa, with many detainees falling ill because of poor conditions.