JAILED MOMS

keep up hope of reuniting with children.

ELOY, Ariz. — While a federal judge in San Diego issued an injunction against President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, giving the government 30 days to reunite parents with more than 2,000 separated children, it’s unclear what it would mean for parents who are locked up thousands of miles from their children, awaiting asylum or immigration hearings in courts and who haven’t seen or heard from their children for weeks.

“We are hoping the government doesn’t create mass family immigration prisons,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the San Diego lawsuit. “The administration has been floating that idea. We are not deluding ourselves.”

Across the Southwest, parents separated from their children sit in detention facilities, watching Spanish-language news for signs they may soon be released. They try to support one another — celebrating when someone gets out and praying for those that remain. But they also pass their sorrow from cell to cell, like a sickness.

At the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas, some group meetings with immigration lawyers have turned into group sobbing sessions. A few days ago, several detainees swore they suddenly heard the sound of children inside the jail, as if overtaken by a collective delusion, three lawyers said.

By Wednesday, news of the judge’s decision began to reach parents at Port Isabel. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw wrote that children younger than 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, while older children must be reunited within 30 days.

“It’s given them hope,” said Ruby Powers, an immigration lawyer who visited the detention center.

At the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona — a privately run immigration jail surrounded by barbed wire, an electrified fence and miles of scorching, sunbaked desert — the injunction could not come fast enough.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman would not say how many parents separated from their children were being held at the 1,500-person facility, but Maria Veliz and another mother — separated from her son six months ago, before the Trump administration began its widespread policy — said they knew of at least 40 cases.

Veliz said she had requested a credible-fear interview, which starts the asylum process, but had yet to receive it. Until she does, Veliz has no hope of a bond hearing.

She said she and her two children had fled their home in northern Guatemala in May after years of escalating violence. Her husband was already living in the United States, having come two years earlier.

“Several times thieves came into my house,” stealing clothes and gasoline the family could not afford to lose, she said. “There were so many nights that my children were scared.”

Her husband sent money for them to make the journey through Mexico. When they were near the border, Veliz sent photos to him in Massachusetts, showing her and her children smiling in the countryside.

On May 23, after climbing over a wall at the U.S. border, Veliz and her children surrendered to federal agents and were taken to a Border Patrol processing facility. After they spent three days on thin mats on the concrete floor, agents came to take the children away.

Her 9-year-old daughter tried to cling to Veliz’s feet, and her son, a year older, held her arms, sobbing, until she told him it would be OK and he could let go.

Veliz had made the children memorize their father’s phone number. Two days later, they called him from a shelter in Chicago.

But Veliz did not know for two more weeks that they had made contact, until she arrived at Eloy.

Veliz recently signed paperwork allowing her husband to take the children. But they have yet to be released from the shelter, and he does not have the heart to tell them their mother won’t be waiting for them in Massachusetts.

Veliz spoke to her son on Sunday, his 11th birthday. The family had planned to celebrate together in the United States. Now they were in three states in three different parts of the country.

Her daughter’s 10th birthday is in late July. By then, the judge’s order requires the government to have reunited Veliz and her children, one way or another.

Reached by phone Wednesday morning, Veliz said that she was unaware of the ruling but that she would rather be locked up with her children than worrying whether they are safe without her.

“We’ll celebrate both of their birthdays here,” she said. “Together.”