Tears, hugs and help: Church groups assist reunited families

SAN ANTONIO» 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 relatives in the United States. Many were still shell-shocked from weeks in government detention.

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 reunion

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 5year-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 and picked them up Monday morning, along with another immigrant family.

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.

The drop-off

Drop-offs usually happen in the afternoon or early evening. But the first time that ICE sent families to Catholic Charities, two weeks ago, it didn’t release families until 3 a.m. And Catholic Charities once found the families it was expecting to receive dropped off at the bus station instead.

“The logic behind how they decide that, we don’t know,” said Matthew Martinez, the group’s vice president of administration.

In many cases, immigrant advocates say, parents and children are quickly released or transferred to family detention centers without notifying their lawyers. The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday filed more than a dozen firstperson accounts of confusion and disorder during the process.

Caseworkers purchase plane tickets for families and have phones available to call the friend or relative sponsoring them. To fund the effort, Catholic Charities has raised $127,000 and received the help of more than 300 volunteers.

The bonding

Parents holding their children laughed and swapped stories about where they were headed next. Most families were headed to distant locations, from California to Florida.

Many told horror stories about their ordeals, all while cherishing the fact that they had their children back.

Carlos Fuentes Maldonado of Honduras held his 1-year-old daughter, Mia. She and her 4year-old sister had been taken to a shelter in Arizona shortly after they had tried to cross the Rio Grande about two months earlier. Their mother, Jennifer Maradiaga, said Mia was still breastfeeding at the time they crossed and she was taken away.

When they got her back Monday, the little girl didn’t immediately appear to recognize them, Fuentes said. By the evening, she was nestled on her father’s shoulder.

Around 8 p.m., Maradiaga’s mother and brother arrived to pick them up and take them home. Her mother began to cry as they hugged, holding her daughter’s cheek against hers for several seconds. The family smiled and laughed, taking turns holding Mia.

Other parents recalled how the food in adult detention facilities was sometimes inedible and that detention officers disregarded their complaints or requests. Two mothers said officers told them they might never see their children again. They were watching Spanish-language television when they learned of the Trump administration’s announcement that it would end mass separations.

“Seeing the protests gave us all encouragement,” said Ildra Medrano Castillo, who brought her 9-year-old son from Guatemala. She said an officer at one facility told her son would be put up for adoption.