Tears, hugs and help: Church groups assist reunited families
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The immigrant parents arrived at Catholic Charities in white vans with their children, their paperwork and almost nothing else.
They needed food, clothing, a place to stay and a way to travel to family in the United States. Many were still shell-shocked from weeks in government detention. One father carried an infant who didn’t recognize him after two months apart. A mother held the hand of her 5-yearold daughter, who refused for a time to talk on the phone because she blamed her for their separation.
Scenes such as this are unfolding throughout Texas and Arizona as the Trump administration works to meet a Thursday deadline to reunite immigrant parents and children. The government is releasing hundreds of families to faith-based groups and leaving the groups to care for them.
The Associated Press observed newly reunited families spending their first day together Monday at Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, which took them in after they were released from custody. The families included children as young as babies and old as teenagers, as well as asylum seekers fleeing violence in Central America and people who were shuttled around the country to various immigrant detention facilities.
Natalia Oliveira da Silva, a mother from Brazil, waited nervously outside the immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, for her young daughter, Sara. She soon spotted the 5-year-old coming in a vehicle, a seatbelt over her chest.
Sara got out and was quickly in her mother’s arms, asking her, “They’re not going to take you away again, right?”
Since their separation in late May, the girl had been at a shelter for immigrant minors in Chicago, while Oliveira was moved through facilities across Texas.
Like other families reunited at Pearsall, Oliveira and her daughter were taken to Catholic Charities in San Antonio, about an hour’s drive away. Charity workers checked them into a hotel Sunday night and picked them up Monday morning, along with another immigrant family.
Oliveira, 30, had not slept the night before. Instead, she said, she watched Sara sleep next to her in bed.
At one point while they were detained, Sara refused to talk to her on the phone. She thinks it’s because Sara was angry about what had happened. She’s still angry herself.
“I hope she doesn’t have any memories of this,” Oliveira said.
When Oliveira and her daughter arrived at the Catholic Charities office, two people held open the doors and said “hola.” Inside, volunteers were folding donated clothes and preparing for the day ahead. A local restaurant had dropped off a catered meal of tortillas, beef and grilled vegetables. In a conference room upstairs, parents could pick from shopping racks of clothes and boxes of toys for the children.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had notified Catholic Charities in the morning to expect seven families to be dropped off. Catholic Charities also takes in families that ICE drops directly at the local bus station, but who might otherwise have to stay there overnight or change several buses to reach their destination. Volunteers from a local interfaith group keep watch at the station for immigrant families and call Catholic Charities when they see them.