Mom reunited with kids in N.Y.
Guatemalan mother had been separated from family
For the first time in 54 days, Yeni Gonzalez Garcia was able to hold her children’s hands in public, freed from the emotional pain of government-imposed separation from her three kids.
The Guatemalan mother who has become a national face of the Trump administration’s practice of separating parents from their children regained full custody of her children on Friday, ages 11, 9 and 6.
Gonzalez Garcia is one of the few to be reunited while thousands of other families remain separated.
On June 28, a group of volunteers bonded Gonzalez Garcia out of detention in Arizona, beginning a cross-country road trip that got her to New York, where her children had been placed in foster care.
Yet, when Gonzalez Garcia arrived she learned her children spent evenings and weekends with a foster parent and she would be limited to visiting her own kids only when they went to the Cayuga Centers in East Harlem for education.
Since July 3, she only got to spend time with her children during weekday visits.
“I was happy (to see them) but at the same time sad because I had to depart and leave them there,” Gonzalez Garcia said at a press conference Friday, with her 11-year-old son’s hand in one hand, and her 9-year-old daughter Jameli’s hand in the other.
Late Thursday night, lawyers, politicians and activists working on Yeni’s reunification learned she would regain custody of her children.
Around 7 p.m. Thursday — before he had learned the mother would regain custody — Jose Xavier Orochena, Gonzalez Garcia’s attorney, outlined three different paths they were pursuing for custody.
The children’s aunt in New York had already submitted paperwork with the Office of Refugee Resettlement prior to the mother’s release from detention, which was in process.
A second path was a court-imposed deadline to reunite all families by July 26. However, Gonzalez Garcia was outside of federal custody, which the government had used to exclude several parents with kids under the age of 5
from an earlier deadline.
The third path was to file a federal lawsuit, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo had secured the highprofile law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld to represent the mother.
In the end, none of those paths were needed. Orochena learned by 9 p.m. Thursday that the children would be released to the mother’s custody on Friday.
Gonzalez Garcia is the first of six mothers that a grassroots group called Immigrant Families Together have bonded out and helped to reach destinations where their children were sent.
As of Friday afternoon, the group had raised more than $159,000 for the six women’s bonds, transportation and long-term support as they pursue asylum cases, according to Julie Schwietert Collazo, a founder of Immigrant Families Together.
Gonzalez Garcia regaining custody means “one down and thousands to go,” said New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents the area where the foster-care facility is located.