Migrant families torn apart in Trump’s America
The practice of separating parents and children at the border has created trauma that, even after they are reunited, may never heal
ELIAS can remember all about school. Sitting at home on the outskirts of New Orleans, he rattles through a list of exercises they did that day.
“Jumping jacks”, he begins. “We did squats, too”. He pretends to bounce something, indicating basketball, and then adds football.
Aged eight, Elias has only been in America for a little more than a year but already he is adopting his new homeland’s culture. He is wearing a Michael Jordan T-shirt, and his shoes are coloured red, white and blue.
As he answers questions, his grin, dominated by a gap in his front teeth, is readily displayed. It is only when asked to recall the moment he was separated from his mother at the Us-mexico border that the smile fades.
“We were locked up, I don’t know how many days,” he says at first. Then the responses get shorter. Do you remember the point you had to split? “A little,” he says.
Asked if he found his time alone hard, Elias nods. His eyes flick across to Milagros, his mother, who is in tears on the sofa a few feet away.
Do you remember what it felt like? Another nod, but no words. Prompted, he looks away from his mother. “It felt…” He pauses for seven seconds. “Unhappy.”
Elias’s experience is not unique. Since Donald Trump became president, thousands of foreign children have been separated from their parents after entering America.
It was official policy from spring to early summer last year. Anyone crossing the border illegally would be charged. If they were with a child, that meant separation. The measure, part of a “zero tolerance” drive on illegal migration, was an attempt to create a disincentive for those seeking to cross into the US from the South.
Around 2,800 children were split from their parents between April and June 2018, but at least another 1,500 were separated before then, when it was happening informally. The policy was ditched in June
2018 after an international outcry, but separations continue if the parent is deemed a danger to their child. At least 1,000 more children have been split from their families since then, bringing the overall total affected to more than 5,000.
To understand the impact of forced separation, The Daily Telegraph has spent months seeking out some of the families affected, to see first-hand how their lives have changed. Milagros, in her early 30s, left a Central American country with Elias last year, fleeing the racism she faced because of the colour of her skin. After passing through Mexico, she claimed asylum at the Texas border. Once in America, border officials said a new policy was in place. They told her to say goodbye to her son and leave the room. Elias was aged just seven.
Milagros becomes tearful as she remembers that moment. The paper napkin in her hand which she has been folding and unfolding, rolling and unrolling, is moved to her eyes. “I just thought, why did I come here? I had already suffered so much. Why did I bring my son here to suffer?”
She goes on: “He was just crying. He was saying ‘Mum, what will become of us? What’s going to become of us?’” For the next fortnight – perhaps longer, she can’t remember exactly – Milagros had no idea where her son was. She went to a detention facility in Texas while Elias was sent to a shelter in New York.
“I was pretty lonely,” she says. “I really did feel like I was going to die.”
Two months later, with the help of lawyers, Milagros won release while her asylum case was handled and got to see her son again. Meeting at an airport, she felt joy, but also a degree of pain. Milagros noticed, as a mother would, that Elias had lost weight.
He was also angry about what had happened. “I was really excited but he had this feeling of: ‘Why did you let me get taken to this place?’” Milagros says. He felt betrayed.
The family’s story has similarities to that of Nery, a 43-year-old from Guatemala, who crossed into Texas last year to seek asylum with his son, also called Nery.
They had fled their home country when gangs threatened Nery Jr, then 15, with a clear message – join us or be killed. They left at night, barely having time to wish loved ones goodbye.
Once detained, they were swiftly separated. Little did they know they would not see each other for 11 months. Nery Sr would be deported while Nery Jr was sent to New York state. They were eventually reunited after a legal aid non-profit organisation championed Nery Sr’s cause. He described the moment he finally saw his son, brought together in America, as “beautiful”.
“It is the hardest thing,” he says now, his son by his side. “Taking your child away from you is like taking away part of your heart. People think it’s hard but they haven’t lived it.”
The long-term impact of separation on the children is still not known. Many separations happened only 18 months ago. Some of those affected do not like to talk about it. But in September, the inspector general at the US Health and Human Services Department, an internal watchdog, produced a report on mental health services in facilities for child migrants.
The findings on separation were damning. One line reported that “separated children exhibited more fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress than did children who were not separated”.
Lee Gelernt, of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, fears the worst for those affected. “I have been doing this civil rights work in the immigration area for more than 25 years. This is the worst practice I have seen in all this time,” he said.
“The medical community told us at the beginning that this was going to cause potentially permanent damage to these children.”
It is now more than a year since Milagros and Elias were reunited. They are rebuilding their lives in New Orleans. She has a hotel job, he appears to be making friends at school.
But the damage is still there. Elias talks less than he used to. He can be a “little rebellious”. And, most worrying to his mother, he never opens up about what happened.
“When I ask him about those things he won’t answer me,” she says, beginning to choke up again. “He just sits there staring at me.”
Sometimes Milagros considers getting a psychiatrist. But she cannot afford it. Elias is not yet nine. She hopes time will prove a healer.
Read a full length version with video interviews on The Telegraph’s website www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world
‘Taking your child away from you is like taking away part of your heart. People think it’s hard but they haven’t lived it’