Lawyer searches for parents deported without children
HUEHUETENANGO, Guatemala — As Juan Carlos Villatoro approached a remote village in Guatemala’s western highlands, he yelled at his driver to stop so he could hail a skinny teenager in a motorized rickshaw.
Flashing a broad smile, he asked the boy to help him on his quest.
“Pardon me, youngster,” Villatoro began. “We are trying to find and help the deported parents who have children who are still detained in the United States. Do you know of a parent who is in this situation? We’d like to reunite them.”
The teen shook his head. “There’s nobody here like that,” he said.
It was a typical encounter for Villatoro, a Guatemalan lawyer turned impromptu detective in an urgent search for deported mothers and fathers with children still in the U.S. With a name serving as his only clue sometimes, he’s traveled twisting trails in cabs, minivans and teeth-rattling old buses to search mountain hamlets where Mayan tongues and suspicion often prevail.
“We don’t have telephone numbers. We don’t have exact addresses or email addresses,” Villatoro said. “There is nothing we can do but move forward and keep fighting and searching for these deported parents.”
This summer the U.S. government separated more than 2,500 children from their parents after the Trump administration instituted a “zero tolerance” policy requiring anyone who crossed the border illegally to be prosecuted. The parents were taken to federal court to face misdemeanor charges.
The move ignited worldwide condemnation and was eventually stopped, but not before many adults were sent to Central America, leaving behind about 400 children — from toddlers to teens.
A federal judge has ruled that it is the U.S. government’s responsibility to reunite families, but the brunt of the work in Guatemala often has fallen on locals such as Villatoro. Even for those familiar with the region’s terrain, history and, most crucially, culture, the task is frustrating and often unsuccessful.
The searchers work with Justice in Motion, a U.S.-based group that is part of a network of U.S. and Central American nonprofits. If they’re lucky, they’ll receive a name or hometown from U.S. officials. The U.S. government only recently began releasing phone numbers for deported parents — but those often do not work.
Even when parents are found, the result isn’t what the searchers might expect. Whereas parents of younger children yearn to be reunited, those of older children sometimes preferred they stay in the U.S.
After all, they had left Guatemala for a better life and perhaps, some parents rationalize, they are old enough to cope in the U.S.