Tearful reunion for family
Husband was convicted of a misdemeanour offence of illegal entry into the United States
MIAMI — It had been nearly two months since Buena Ventura Martin Godinez had seen her seven-year-old daughter after the frightened young mother was separated from her family trying to cross from Mexico into the United States. They’ve spoken tearfully by phone, but seeing her at a Miami airport Sunday for the first time, Martin grabbed the child in a tight embrace, tears running down her cheeks during a reunion she feared may never happen.
“I feel very happy, now and to complete my joy I would like to have my husband released,” Martin said in Spanish as daughter Janne clutched a stuffed dog and blue balloons and played with her younger brother at baggage claim.
Martin carried her infant son from Mexico into the U.S. in May, fleeing what she said were threats from violent local gangsters demanding money in their hometown in northwestern Guatemala. Her husband followed two weeks later with the young girl.
But the family was caught by the Border Patrol and scattered about under President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy forcing families to be separated when crossing the border. Her husband, Pedro Godinez Aguilar, was convicted of the misdemeanour offence of illegal entry into the U.S. and awaits almost certain deportation at a jail in Atlanta. Martin was held for a week with her infant in Arizona and Texas, at times sleeping on the concrete floor of a detention facility before she was released, she said. She now wears a black monitoring device strapped to her ankle. She and her baby boy are with relatives in a gritty town south of Miami.
The little girl was in the custody of a child welfare agency in Michigan, where Martin said her daughter made several tearful calls to her, asking when they’d be reunited.
The family is one of thousands who have tried to find refuge in the U.S. in recent weeks only to be caught up in the harsh reality of an immigration system that has never been as welcoming as many desperate migrants hoped and has grown harsher under Trump, with the separation of parents from children being used as a means of discouraging illegal immigration.
More families are crossing the southwest border from Guatemala than any other nation, with 29,278 families apprehended between October and the end of May.
Martin and her husband could easily have been apprehended under the previous administration, too, and would have faced a tough battle for asylum. But the father wouldn’t have been prosecuted for a first-time crossing; heir daughter also would not have been shipped across the country.
As the grateful mother clutched her daughter Sunday, she had a warning for other families. “I would advise people to find another country to seek refuge ... because here the law is very tough. People don’t have a heart.”