Tearful reunion follows girl’s pleas
6-year-old was global symbol of separation policy
The desperate pleas from the 6-year-old Salvadoran girl in a Border Patrol processing facility reverberated across the world, becoming a symbol of the Trump administration’s practice of separating immigrant families at the border.
In the secret audio recording, obtained by Pro-Publica last month, the child is heard repeatedly asking federal agents to call her aunt, whose number the girl had memorized. Small children wailed for their parents in the background, at times sobbing so hard they seemed to be gasping for breath.
On Friday, one month after they were separated near the Texas border, Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid was tearfully reunited with her mother in Houston. The 3 a.m. government handoff, with its travel delays and last-minute changes, came as the government reported to a California federal judge on its progress reuniting what it said was 2,551 separated children who are 5 and older in its custody.
The administration had been able to reunite just over half of 103 such children under the age of 5 by Thursday, two days after the court’s deadline for that younger category.
“I told her that I love her and missed her very much,” Jimena told reporters, her dark hair in ponytails as she sat close to her mother at a packed news conference in southwest Houston.
Cindy Madrid, who had driven with her lawyer from the border overnight Thursday after finding out about the revised plans too late to get a flight, barely held back tears.
“This child is very strong,” said the family’s lawyer, Thelma O. Garcia. “Nobody would have known or understood what was happening at the border if it wasn’t for the audio with her voice.”
Across the country this week, the process of reuniting families played out in fits and starts, with little notice to advocates and lawyers and a general air of secrecy and chaos, reminiscent of how the separation policy itself unfolded.
‘Should be transparent’
Facing growing outrage, the president suddenly ended it last month. But reunification didn’t begin in earnest until a federal judge, Dana M. Sabraw, imposed strict deadlines in late June as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
On Friday, Sabraw ordered the government to give 12 hours notice before each reunification, in part to allow faith-based groups and service providers to help families with lodging and transportation if need be. In some cases, advocates said parents and children were left at bus stops this week with nowhere to go.
“There shouldn’t be anything mysterious about this. It should be transparent and easy to do,” Sabraw said. “The group is under 3,000; that is a manageable number, especially with the resources the government has.”
He ordered the administration not to charge parents for costs related to reuniting with their children, including for travel and DNA testing. Advocates have reported that some families were footed thousands of dollars in bills to reunite with children whom the government had removed from parents.
“It doesn’t make any sense for any of these parents who have been improperly separated to pay anything,” Sabraw said. “Their reunification should be paid for, whether it’s DNA, travel, it should be paid for by the government.”
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU, told the judge that separated parents have had little communication with their children, with phone calls “sparing at best.” He said there was concern that the government would begin “mass removals” this weekend and asked the court to consider ordering the government to wait on such deportations.
Sabraw declined to immediately do so but told the ACLU that he would accept emergency filings over the weekend if necessary. The parties are set to meet Monday for another update on the reunification, in which the government must provide a list of all separated parents in immigrant detention as well as the names of their children.
Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian said she expected the government to file more detailed information late Friday but that the plan was to reunite families in a “more limited number of locations,” so that the process would progress more smoothly than before.
Thousands of remaining children must be reunited with their parents by July 26, unless the government finds that it is not in their best interest.
“In the last round, it was more difficult to find locations. That will be less of a problem this time,” Fabian told the court. “The plan is to move folks that don’t raise concerns and start reunifying them quickly.”
Families transferred
Manoj Govindaiah, director of family detention services for the San Antonio nonprofit Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, told reporters in a conference call Friday that nearly all the group’s clients of mothers and children held in family detention in Karnes County have been transferred to another in Dilley. He said they heard that separated fathers had been moved from across the country to an adult detention facility nearby.
“We believe there is a chance that those fathers will eventually be transferred to Karnes, possibly for reunification with their children there,” Govindaiah said.
The two family detention facilities outside of San Antonio can hold about 3,200 parents and children. The administration would like to hold families together instead of releasing them, but a Los Angeles federal judge has rejected its request to detain them for longer than several weeks. She called it a “cynical attempt” to undo a long-standing court settlement, known as the Flores agreement, which, among other things, limits to about 20 days the time children can be held in federal detention.
As of Thursday, the government had reunited 57 separated children in its custody who are under the age of 5, deeming another 46 “ineligible for reunification.” Of those, 22 children could not be reunited, either because their parents have criminal backgrounds or face criminal allegations, or because they were not children of the person with whom they crossed the border. One parent had a communicable disease. Another 12 parents have been deported and 11 remain in federal or state custody for other offenses.
One child, who would qualify for U.S citizenship because his mother is American, has been in federal foster care for more than a year. The government said the parent’s location is “unknown.”
Sabraw on Friday ordered the government to reunite those families once the parents finish serving their criminal sentences, are located in their home countries, or otherwise are able to safely receive their children.
“There are some bumps to be expected,” he said, “given the enormity of the undertaking.”
Deliberate confusion?
Garcia, the lawyer for Jimena and her mother, said their reunification had been “confusing, and we think on purpose. They didn’t want the media to know because of the high profile of this case.”
Initially, the mother was supposed to fly to Arizona to pick up Jimena, but the plan suddenly changed, with the government informing them that she would be brought to Texas instead, though without specifying which city. At the airport, they changed the gate to meet Jimena at the last minute.
The mother, who came here after a Salvadoran gang leader killed her boyfriend while she was walking with him and threatened to shoot her, too, said she plans to seek asylum here.
At the news conference, Jimena shyly told the thousands of other separated children to “have patience.”
“You’re going to go back to your parents, and soon you’re going to have a better future,” she said.
Then, as it wrapped up, she began playing with a doll that was gifted to her.
“They didn’t have dolls to play with there, only plush toys,” she said of the facility in Arizona where she was held. “But I like dolls.”