‘I have no idea where my daughter is’
Migrant parents separated from children are desperate for news
When Maria Ana Mendez left Honduras a decade ago to earn money in the United States, her daughter Cindy was still in pigtails and playing with dolls.
But settled now with a job and an apartment in upstate New York, Mendez was ready to bring Cindy to live with her. Because she is still without legal status and could not legally bring her into the country, she paid a guide $8,000 in February to take Cindy, now 16, across thousands of miles to the doorstep of the United States.
Three weeks later, Mendez heard from her daughter for the first time: She had crossed the Rio Grande on a raft and was being held in a temporary U.S. border camp in Donna, Texas. She had not showered in five days and was sleeping on the ground. She did not feel well.
Days without news turned into weeks of anguish as Mendez made repeated phone calls to a U.S. government hotline to learn her daughter’s whereabouts. On April 3, Cindy was able to call — from a hospital in San Diego. She was “very sick” with COVID-19, she told her mother.
“I can’t take this anymore,” said Mendez, who booked a flight to San Diego.
A surge of arrivals on the border has put nearly 20,000 migrant children in government custody — the largest number in recent memory — creating chaos and confusion as immigration authorities scramble to care for them, contact their parents and process them for release.
The Biden administration has rushed to open emergency intake sites at convention centers in San Diego and Dallas, a coliseum and expo center in San Antonio, a former oil camp in Midland, Texas, and the Army base at Fort Bliss, Texas. Other sites, including a convention center in Long Beach, Calif., are expected to accommodate children soon.
But the government is still struggling to bring in people to staff them, and immigrant parents across the country, who often have no idea what happened to their children after they entered the United States, are growing increasingly desperate. Some children have gone weeks or longer without being able to contact their parents.
The problem appears to be one of sheer numbers, as the new administration struggles to hire enough people to staff the temporary shelters, make contact with parents and verify that children can be safely released to them.
Administration officials say they are doing the best they can to handle the latest rush to the border, trying to provide safe housing and secure placements for children who have already faced substantial dangers traveling through Mexico and crossing the border, often with no adult guardian.
“I can say quite clearly: Don’t come over,” President Joe Biden said last month. “Don’t leave your town or city or community.”
Yet hundreds of children continue to be intercepted and transported to processing centers each day. In the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, border facilities were operating at 743 percent capacity last month. A tent structure in Donna was at 1,707 percent capacity.
About half the children arriving at the border are coming to reunify with a parent, like Mendez, who has been living in the United States for many years.
Often the children were raised by grandmothers and other close relatives who are now aging and can no longer care for them. Like their parents, many are teenagers who do not see a future in their home countries.
Because the parents lack legal status or have asylum cases stuck in immigration court backlogs, most are unable to sponsor their children to immigrate legally to the United States; they resort to smuggling networks to transport them.
Nearly 16,500 migrant teenagers and children who crossed the border without a parent are being housed in Department of Health and Human Services facilities until they have met the requirements for release. Roughly 4,000 more are stranded in Border Patrol stations waiting for beds in those shelters to open.