‘Don’t do this to the children’
Judge reunites migrant Brazilian mother, son
CHICAGO — Brazilian mother and 9-year-old son separated at the U.S.-Mexico border were together again Thursday after a federal judge in Chicago ordered the U.S. government to release the boy, in one of the first examples of an urgent petition for court intervention successfully reuniting parent and child.
Facing reporters together just hours after the reunion, Lidia Karine Souza and her son, Diogo, wrapped their arms around each other. Diogo frequently looked up at his mom and smiled.
Asked if she had a message for President Donald Trump about her ordeal and his zero tolerance policy that separated hundreds of children from their parents, the mother responded through a translator, “Don’t do this to the children.”
Under Trump’s policy, the government has begun prosecuting all migrants caught entering the country without authorization. Trump has halted his policy of taking children from their detained parents under public pressure but around 2,000 of them are still being held, with many families saying they’ve not known how to find them.
Jesse Bless, an attorney for Souza and her son who stood with them at their news conference, described the ruling by U.S. District Judge Manish Shah as unique, adding he hoped it would “open the door” for others to do the same and help hasten a resolution to the crisis.
When asked about advice she’d give to others facing similar challenges in getting their kids back, Souza said: “Don’t give up, be persistent.”
She turned herself and her son into U.S. authorities at the Texas border and requested asylum, arguing her life was in danger in her native Brazil. She hasn’t said how. U.S. officials detained her in Texas and took her son on May 30 without telling her where he would be.
When she was released June 9, she said, another detained mother who had also been separated from her child told her to check a Chicago shelter, and there she found Diogo. They were allowed no more than weekly 20-minute phone calls, in which he begged her to get them reunited.
Shah, the son of immigrants from India, mulled his decision for just four hours.
The boy appeared relaxed fielding questions before dozens of TV cameras and reporters at their lawyers’ office in a Chicago high-rise building. But he said the days and weeks after he was separated from his mom were difficult. “I cried almost every day I wasn’t with my mother,” he said, also speaking through a translator.
The reunion occurred as the White House is under increasing pressure to bring families back together after another judge’s order this week ordered federal officials to do so in 30 days for many parents and children. Critics say the government has no clear plan to reunite them.