Some migrant kids will no longer be separated from relatives

LOS ANGELES — After the girl’s grandfather died, she traveled from Guatemala to the Texas border with her uncle.

Border Patrol agents separated them. The girl, then 10, ended up in foster care, while her uncle was deported, according to her attorney, Miriam Enriquez.

Such painful separations could be avoided under a new Biden administration program that will allow children to quickly reunite with relatives like uncles and grandparents at the border.

The girl, whom the attorney did not name to protect her privacy, is now 14 and still in foster care in Southern California while her asylum case is being adjudicated.

Since arriving in the U.S. in early 2019, she has learned Spanish and English, which she now speaks fluently in addition to her Mayan dialect, and is doing well in school, according to Enriquez, a staff attorney with Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles.

“Their separations were undoubtedly traumatic and difficult, especially in light of their tender age,” Enriquez said of the girl and another Indigenous child from Guatemala who was also separated from his uncle at the border.

The new effort, called the Trusted Adult Relative Program, is being tested at a Border Patrol station in Texas, according to three sources who were not authorized to speak publicly.

A Department of Homeland Security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that a few dozen children have been reunified with family members since the program began in May.

“I think it is not in the best interest of the child to separate them from trusted adults that they’ve been traveling hundreds of miles with,” the official said, adding that taxpayers would not have to foot the bill for lengthy stays in immigration custody.