Tearful reunion for mum and daughter separated at border
MIAMI: It had been nearly two months since Buena Ventura Martin Godinez last saw her sevenyearold daughter after the frightened young mother was separated from her family trying to cross from Mexico into the United States.
Seeing her at a Miami airport on Sunday, she grabbed the child in a tight hug, weeping during a reunion she feared might never happen.
“I feel very happy now. To complete my joy, I’d like to have my husband released,” Godinez said in Spanish as her daughter Janne played with her younger brother.
Martin carried her infant son from Mexico into the United States in May, fleeing threats from violent local gangsters in their hometown in Guatemala. Her husband followed two weeks later with Janne.
But the family was caught by the Border Patrol and scattered about under President Donald Trump’s zerotolerance 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 and awaits almost certain deportation at a jail in Atlanta.
Godinez 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 now wears a monitoring device strapped to her ankle, and she and her son are with relatives in a gritty town south of Miami.
Janne was in the custody of a child welfare agency in Michigan and made heartbreaking calls to her mother, asking when they would be reunited.
The family is one of thousands 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.
“I’d advise people to find another country to seek refuge ... here the law is very tough. People don’t have a heart,” Godinez said.