9 deportees, kids reunite
Parents land in U.S. after 1½ years apart
LOS ANGELES — Nine parents who were deported as the Trump administration separated thousands of migrant families landed back in the U.S. late Wednesday to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half.
The group arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Guatemala City in a trip arranged under the order of a federal judge who found that the U.S. government had unlawfully prevented them from seeking asylum. An asylum advocate confirmed that the nine parents were all aboard the flight.
Some of the children were at the airport to greet them, including David Xol’s 9-year-old son, Byron.
Xol fell to one knee and tearfully embraced Byron for about 3 minutes, patting the back of his son’s head.
“They all kind of hit the lottery,” said Linda Grimm, an attorney who represents one of the parents returning to the U.S. “There are so many people out there who have been traumatized by the family separation policy whose pain is not going to be redressed.”
More than 4,000 children are known to have been separated from their parents before and during the official start of the zero tolerance policy in the spring of 2018. Under the policy, border agents charged parents en masse with illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, then placed parents’ children in government facilities, including some “tender-age shelters” set up for infants.
The U.S. has acknowledged that agents separated families long before they enforced zero tolerance across the entire southern border, its agencies did not properly record separations, and some detention centers were overcrowded and undersupplied, with families denied food, water or medical care.
In June of 2018, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the government to stop separating families, and reunite parents and children.
At least 470 parents were deported without their children. Some of the children were held in U.S. government facilities and ultimately placed with sponsors. Others were deported to their home countries.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which did not respond.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the original family separation lawsuit before Sabraw, asked the judge to order the return of a small group of parents whose children remained in the U.S. In September, Sabraw required the U.S. to allow 11 parents to come back and denied relief to seven others.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said Sabraw made clear that he would order the return of only people “who were misled or coerced into giving up their asylum rights.” That will leave other parents who fled violence, poverty and persecution to decide whether to have their children return to their home countries or remain in the U.S. without them.
“Many are going to make the decision that generations of immigrant parents have made — to leave their child in the U.S. and endure the hardship of separation, but to do it for their child’s own safety,” Gelernt said.
Xol said that after he and his then-7-year-old son, Byron, crossed the border, they were taken to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center in south Texas. Xol was charged with illegal entry on May 19, 2018.
Two days later, Xol said an officer told him to sign a document that would allow him and Byron to be deported together. If he didn’t sign, Byron would be given up for adoption and Xol would be detained for at least two years.
Xol signed the document, only to have Byron taken away and then Xol was deported to Guatemala. Byron was placed in government facilities for 11 months.
The family’s attorney, Ricardo de Anda, persuaded a federal court to force the U.S. to let a Texas family take in Byron. Since May of 2019, Byron has lived with Holly and Matthew Sewell and their two children, with regular video calls to his family.
While the U.S. has stopped the large-scale separations, it has implemented policies to prevent many asylum-seekers from entering the country. Under its “Remain in Mexico” policy, more than 50,000 people have been told to wait there for weeks or months for U.S. court dates. The Trump administration also is ramping up deportations of Central Americans to other countries in the region to seek asylum there.