Migrant parents including Iris, from Honduras (left), Gustavo, from Guatamala (standing in green), Wilson Romero, from Honduras (standing), and Christian, from Honduras (seated in gray), socialize outside the Annunciation House on Tuesday, June 26, 2018, in El Paso, Texas. Thirty-two parents separated from their children are staying at the home as they wait to be reunited with their children. If the Trump administration has any hope of complying with a judge’s order to reunite thousands of migrant children and parents within 30 days, it’s going to have to clear away the red tape and confusion many immigrants have encountered so far. (AP Photo/Matt York)
EL PASO, Texas — In an unmarked brick building a few blocks from the Mexican border, immigrant parents clutched folders of birth certificates and asylum paperwork, and sat on folding chairs, waiting to use a single, shared landline phone.
They rushed to the phone as their names were called with word that a relative or government worker was on the line, perhaps with news about their children.
For days and weeks now, some of the hundreds of parents separated from their children at the Mexican border by the Trump administration have been battling one of the world’s most complex immigration systems to find their youngsters and get them back.
For many, it has been a lopsided battle, and a frustrating and heartbreaking one. Most do not speak English, many know nothing about their children’s whereabouts, and some said their calls to the government’s 1-800 information hotline have gone unanswered.
Now, at least, they have the legal system on their side, since a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday night to reunite the more than 2,000 children with their parents in 30 days, or 14 days in the case of those under the age of 5.
But huge logistical challenges persist, and whether the United States government can manage to clear away the red tape, confusion, and seeming lack of coordination – and make the deadline remains to be seen.
The Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of the children, gave no immediate details on Wednesday as to how they intend to respond to the ruling.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he believes the deadline is realistic.
“It’s a question of political will, not resources,” he said.
Among the complicating factors: Children have been sent to shelters all over the US, thousands of miles from the border. And perhaps hundreds of parents have already been deported from the US without their children.
A woman in Guatemala who was deported without her 8-year-old son has had to find a US lawyer from her cinderblock home on the outskirts of Guatemala City to help her get Anthony back.
Elsa Johana Ortiz applauded the federal judge’s ruling but added, “As long as he’s not with me, I will not be at peace.”
In El Paso, three dozen parents released on Sunday from a US detention center started a feverish search for their children, using the landline phone at a shelter run by Annunciation House.
Some of those at Annunciation House rushed to catch buses bound for New York, Dallas, and the West Coast to live with family members in the hope that establishing residency will make it easier to get their kids back. Those who left for other cities carried little more than shopping bags stuffed with sandwiches and paperwork.
Digna Perez of El Salvador said she was separated from her 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter at the border on May 29. She spoke with them on Monday by telephone and was alarmed to hear lethargic, distracted responses from her normally talkative son.
“It was like I was forcing the words out of him,” she said. “He wasn’t like that before.”
She planned to travel to Houston to stay with family friends in an attempt to reclaim her children by showing there was a suitable home waiting for them.
Another asylum-seeker at Annunciation House, Wilson Romero, hoped to be reunited with his 5-year-old daughter Nataly in California — at the home of his mother, a recent immigrant herself.
The 26-year-old father was separated from her daughter by US authorities in El Paso in May. In Honduras, he worked at a textile factory making logos for US brands on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, one of Latin America’s most violent cities, and he said he left his homeland so his daughter had a chance at having a career someday. Now he just wanted to be with Nataly again.
“I pray to God it is soon,” said Romero, who wears a tattoo of his daughter’s name under his right arm.
For many immigrants, the bureaucracy has become increasingly frustrating as they try to find their children.
Some have had to send for birth certificates and identity documents from Honduras, and were waiting for them to arrive in the mail.
Some parents attempting to get their children placed with friends or relatives in the US were being asked by the government to provide fingerprints of relatives along with utility bills and lease information, which many newly arrived immigrants did not have, said Jesse Bless, an attorney from Jeff Goldman Immigration in Boston, who is representing Lidia Karine Souza.
In this Tuesday, June 26, 2018, photo provided by paralegal Luana Mazon, Lidia Karine Souza, 27, hugs her 9-year-old son Diogo De Olivera Filho as Souza visited her son for the first time since they were separated at the US-Mexico border in late May. Her son remained in custody, much of it quarantined in a room because he had the chicken pox, and she has been told the soonest the boy could be released is late July. She filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. An emergency hearing is scheduled for Thursday. (Courtesy of Luana Mazon via AP)
Souza, 27, turned herself and her son, Diogo, in to US authorities at the Texas border and requested asylum, arguing her life was in danger in her native Brazil. US officials detained her in Texas and took her son last May 30 without telling her where he would be.
When she was released on June 9, she said, another detained mother who had also been separated from her child told her to check a Chicago shelter, and there she found him. They were allowed no more than weekly 20-minute phone calls, in which he begged her to get them reunited.
Souza, who moved in with relatives in Massachusetts, said she submitted 36 pages of documents that US officials required of her in order to regain her child. But her son remained in custody – more like quarantined in a room because he had the chicken pox, and she now has been told her relatives need to be fingerprinted, and that the soonest the boy could be released will be in late July.
Diogo celebrated his 9th birthday on Monday locked up.
Souza filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration. An emergency hearing is scheduled for Thursday.
Souza visited Diogo for the first time on Tuesday. They embraced, and she kissed him several times on the head and face, then grabbed his cheeks gently with her hands as they both cried.
“I missed you so much,” she said in Portuguese.
Asked how he was, Diogo said: “I am better now.” /kga