Gang claims split migrant families
Despite order to end policy, dozens of children separated on unproven federal accusations
The threats on Facebook Messenger grew more sinister by the hour. The stranger said he knew where Carlos Arias lived and worked and that if he didn’t pay the gang $1,300 a month, the young father would have to choose whom he would rather see dead: His girlfriend, his brother, or his two small children. You’re going to see a photo. We are going to chop up your children.
Arias moved out of his house in El Salvador’s capital city, staying with a relative. But when the threats escalated, he fled with his children to the Texas border, where he hoped last month to ask for asylum. Instead Border Patrol agents accused the 35year-old of belonging to a gang and imprisoned him, placing his children in a San Antonio federal shelter. President Donald Trump’s administration ended its controversial practice of separating families at the southern border six months ago and under a federal judge’s orders has reunified more than 2,100 immigrant children with their parents. Efforts are ongoing for hundreds more.
But attorneys say federal agents continue such separations by accusing parents of gang affiliation — sometimes with scant or undisclosed evidence — or using even mi-
nor crimes they committed years ago in the United States as justification.
The administration said it is complying with current law and a settlement in the landmark San Diego federal suit that allows the government to remove children from their parents if the adults could pose a danger. U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, who is overseeing that case, imposed no standards or guidelines for when such situations warrant separation.
Past administrations, including President Barack Obama’s, also split up families if there was a question about the safety of the child or the biological relationship. But attorneys say such determinations are now playing out with greater frequency and with little transparency, and that the government risks mistakes that could permanently sever children from their parents.
“The lack of transparency when the U.S. government separates families is troublesome on many levels,” said Laura Peña, a former immigration prosecutor turned advocate with the Texas Civil Rights Project, an Austin nonprofit monitoring the practice. “It becomes David vs. Goliath when the U.S. government has secret ‘information’ or ‘suspicion’ of gang membership, fraud, or other issues that leads to the separation of a parent from a child. We have seen that the strength of Goliath tends to lead to permanent family separation.”
Once children are removed from their parents, they are placed in federal shelters and adults can quickly be deported alone. Half a year since the federal lawsuit forced the reunification of more than 2,600 separated children, 96 remain in government custody as advocates struggle to find their deported parents.
Since June, Homeland Security statistics show another 81 children have been separated from their parents or legal guardians. In about a third of those cases, the adults were accused of gang ties, a criminal history or an extraditable warrant. The remainder were hospitalized, prosecuted for other crimes, or it is not clear why they were separated.
“The welfare of children in our custody is paramount,” said Katie Waldman, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, in a statement. "As we have already said —and the numbers show: separations are rare.”
About half of all such separations appear to have occurred in the McAllen area, where the Texas Civil Rights Project flagged 35 cases since June — 20 in which parents had a documented criminal history in the United States, ranging from possession of cocaine to drunken driving, as presented during their federal court hearings.
“We are very concerned that the government is using all criminal history to circumvent the injunction in San Diego prohibiting the separation of families,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who filed the lawsuit blocking the practice. “We are looking into the cases that are brought to our attention from around the country.”
The reason for separating the remaining 15 parents in McAllen is unclear, but they include at least one Guatemalan father who was suspected of having a false birth certificate for his 2-year-old daughter. The Texas Civil Rights Project sought a DNA test proving their biological relationship, and the father and toddler were later reunified and released.
Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York has also identified 17 children who were transferred to federal shelters in the area without any records that they had been removed from their parents — most whom authorities said were suspected of some kind of criminal background that could pose a risk.
The government did not provide details, but one of those parents —first identified last month by ProPublica — was, like Arias, accused of belonging to a Salvadoran gang after a routine Border Patrol background check “confirmed” his affiliation with MS-13. He was separated from his 4-year-old son.
No more information was shared about the allegations and an immigration judge released the father on an $8,000 bond, said Jodi Ziesemer, a supervising attorney at Catholic Charities. He was seeking to gain custody of his son,
In Arias’ case, Border Patrol officers ran his fingerprints when they apprehended him and his two children near McAllen last month.
He said they accused him of belonging to a gang and made him take off his shirt, expressing surprise when he had no tattoos — a trademark of MS-13. The officers said they were going to take him from his kids, causing 11year-old Alison, a shy and studious “daddy’s girl,” to burst into tears, Arias said.
He handed the federal agents a copy of an official document from El Salvador’s Justice Department confirming that he had no criminal record. He also had a new passport and driver’s license, which could have been problematic to obtain had he been flagged with gang membership, and a letter from his employer vouching for his character.
“I’m not in a gang,” he told the agents.
The officers took Arias to McAllen’s federal courthouse, where he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor crime of illegally entering the country. The judge sentenced him to time served since he had never before been in the United States.
When Arias returned to the Border Patrol processing center, Alison and 7year-old Carlos were gone, taken to a shelter for immigrant children hundreds of miles away.
“I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye,” the father said in an extensive telephone interview from the immigrant detention facility in Laredo where he is now being held.
Federal officials have told Arias and his lawyer, Norma Sepulveda, that they believe his gang affiliation because of an unspecified incident in 2005 and unknown “pictures and statements,” which the United States government has declined to release.
Arias said he had no idea what they could be referring to. Neither did his former wife and the mother of his children who met Arias in 2005. The two separated in 2014 and she left San Salvador for Seattle shortly after.
The mother asked not to be identified because she is here illegally and fears deportation. She said she left her children with Arias because he was a responsible, caring father and that she sent about $500 home every month to help with the family’s expenses.
“It was never our plan that they should come here,” she said. “I know how dangerous the journey is. We thought I could send enough money that they could move to a safer neighborhood and maybe buy a house.”
She said they talked several times a day, often on video chat, and that Arias and the children usually spent nights watching movies and doing homework. On weekends, he took them fishing, sometimes bringing along his girlfriend.
“He’s a really honorable guy, a hard worker and a great father,” the mother said. “I never had any complaints about him and the government’s accusation makes no sense.”
The allegation also stunned Arias’ boss at a fancy downtown San Salvador design firm, where he began working in January 2005, selling top-brand art and engineering supplies.
“That doesn’t seem possible to me,” said Claudia Rodriguez, who asked that her company not be identified for safety reasons. “He was a very honest, trustworthy employee.”
She said he had recently been promoted to running the store after working for years in sales, where he had full access to the cash registry.
“He had a good job,” she said. “But then the gangs began harassing him.”
The online extortion began in October.
Arias suspects a gangster obtained his Facebook contact information through a relative who has been in prison for years on a robbery charge. The man asked about his car and motorcycle and mentioned family members by name. We control everything and
we know everything.
Strangers began lurking outside Arias’ home. Once he fled his house to stay elsewhere with family, young men began asking friends about his whereabouts. They inquired about him at work.
Arias said he twice tried to file police reports but was told he had to name the perpetrators for police to investigate. He finally managed to lodge a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, but it would take more than a week to be assigned.
By that time Arias had left El Salvador. After he was gone, he learned gang members with MS-13 tattoos had killed a neighbor three houses down.
He thought he could find safety in Seattle, where his former wife said they could stay with her. But then came the accusation that he belonged to a gang.
Corry Schiermeyer, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, declined to discuss Arias’ case.
Adelina Pruneda, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, did not address specific questions about his alleged gang affiliation, but said in a statement only that he had been arrested after illegally entering the United States.
In a transcript of his telephone interview with an asylum officer, Arias repeated the same story he had told the Houston Chronicle.
The bureaucrat found he had not established a sufficient “credible fear” for asylum because he had not proved that he would face persecution due to his race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a “social group.” Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made it significantly harder to obtain asylum through fears of gang violence or domestic abuse.
But crucially, the asylum officer did not raise any concerns about Arias’ gang affiliation, or that he would face a bar to receiving asylum because of a criminal background.
“That is key,” said Sepulveda, his attorney. “I believe the government made a mistake in this case.”
Arias’ former wife said the government shelter in San Antonio called her last week because Alison was “in hysterics.”
“She is really close to her dad,” the mother said of her daughter. “She loves me of course but her dad is everything.”
The mother has applied to take in her two children, though she fears submitting her fingerprints may lead to her own deportation. Since July, immigration authorities have arrested 170 relatives who are here illegally and came forward to claim migrant children in government custody.
Unless an immigration judge decides in his favor, Arias faces the prospect of returning home alone to threats in his Facebook messages that still fill him with dread.
Hopefully you come back here. You’re going to see a photo of all your family.