Texas, United States
“My biggest fear is that they won’t give me mine childrenSays the afflicted Honduran mother Ruth, who suffered greatly in the week it took to find her two children and her little sister in a system steeped in thousands of unaccompanied children under the custody of the US government.
Those days anticipated the long bureaucratic nightmare he will face before meeting the minors aged 14, 10 and 9, and he fears that problems could arise that would make it impossible to wish to meet them again. , to fulfill.
Ruth, who asked Efe not to disclose her last name for security reasons, is counting the hours to meet her children Denis, 10 years old, and Jeremy, 14 years old, and her sister Esther, 9 years old.
WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE THEY ARE
“I always insisted they write down my phone number, and they even taught my little sister,” the 37-year-old migrant insists.
Neither the Customs and Border Guards (CBP) nor Ruth’s children contacted her to tell her where they were on the Texas border.
On Wednesday, Ruth managed to speak to a CBP agent who told her they were dealing with thousands of children and that all she could tell her was that the three children were under surveillance by border authorities.
“The system is incredibly complicated, if you don’t have the right tools it is a very difficult task to find the minors,” explains immigration attorney Frances Arroyo, who helped Ruth take the first steps to find her children. .
The lawyer warns that the overwhelming arrival of unaccompanied children and immigrants to the border increases the complexity and disorganization of the system, the scant information and even the policies of former President Donald Trump’s administration are causing a traffic jam that could end . harm minors.
Last Thursday, the government reported that it had intercepted a record number of minors at the border in March without the accompaniment of a parent or legal guardian.
The 18,890 minors found last month, double the number in February (9,431), are just part of the 172,000 migrants intercepted in the border with Mexico, most of whom have been expelled from the country.
SUFFERING THAT COSTS
In this sense, activist Nora Sandigo Efe warns that these children “are exposed to a sense of abandonment. It tears them emotionally. “
Sandigo, who runs a foundation that cares for children and adolescents whose parents are being held and deported for reasons migratory, has had to diversify its goals and today become a link to reunite the thousands of children who have arrived alone at the border.
An example of this “harsh reality” as defined by the activist is the “alopecia” of a five-year-old Mexican girl who crossed the border with her 9-year-old sister to reunite with her mother who lives in Nebraska.
“The 5-year-old girl had holes in her head. Hair had fallen out due to stress, ”said Sandigo, who accompanied the girls on their way from Houston to Nebraska to reunite with their mother last week.
Ruth fears her sister will be separated from her children, as the little ones have become the 9-year-old girl’s mainstay.
But with the facilities saturated with minors who have only entered the country, the delivery time and the place they will be sent to under the care of the Department of Health and Services (HHS), it is impossible to calculate how long they will be separated are, Arroyo insists.
SUPPORT OF THE CRITICISMS
The overwhelming arrival of unaccompanied children has sparked a wave of criticism of the Biden administration, both from Republicans who assure that its immigration policy has spawned the current arrival of migrants and from the same families who dare to embark on a tough journey. start hoping to find open borders.
“They had no place to live, my parents’ house was washed away by the hurricane and there was also a lot of violence,” Ruth says of the reasons her family emigrated.
He adds that his sons and sister did not arrive at the border alone. The little ones came out of the hand of their grandfather, who made the decision not to cross the Rio Grande with them, believing that this way the little ones would have more opportunities to stay in the United States.
He says there were many families on that side of the river who had passed through it and were deported in less than a day. Even a lady who had a girl with Down syndrome. So he decided to send them alone, ”he says with a lump in his throat.
60% of those arrested at the border, 103,900 in total, were immediately expelled under so-called “Title 42”, a measure instituted by former President Donald Trump that, arguing with the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden government to expel unaccompanied adults and families with children over 7 years old.
Faced with the uncertainty of when she will reunite with her children at her home in San Bernardino, California, Ruth is exacerbated by the fact that her 53-year-old father has been missing at the border for over a week, and she fears the worst.
“We don’t know where he is,” he says in a broken voice.