Child, 10, who made dangerous journey to U.S. reunited with mom

LOS ANGELES — Ana Paredes paced back and forth in anxious anticipation, her eyes on the escalator disgorging passengers into the baggage claim area. When the little girl emerged, Paredes rushed forward to clutch and caress her. But 10-year-old Melissa, the daughter she had not seen for seven years, at first embraced her only halfheartedly.

Before boarding the flight to Los Angeles, the girl had fretted on the phone about whether she would find her mother at the airport. “Will I recognize you?” she asked.

Her arrival April 2 marked the end of a 2,500-mile journey that began in Guatemala in February, progressed over land through Mexico and then ended in a hazardous raft trip across the Rio Grande into Texas. She spent several weeks in a government-contracted group home before being allowed to join her mother and two older siblings in California.

When Paredes left Melissa in Guatemala in 2014, her daughter had been a cheerful toddler, just starting to learn colors and talk in complete sentences. Now, she walked off the plane with her thick black hair gathered in a bun, her air mature and aloof, carrying her own luggage.

Over the past six months, nearly 50,000 migrant children like Melissa have crossed the southwestern border on their own, an extraordinary new wave of immigration that has left authorities scrambling to open shelters and locate family members in the United States.

Unlike the migrant children separated from their families at the border under the Trump administration, many of the children arriving now were left behind years ago in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador by parents who traveled north to find work. Their parents were encouraged to send for them by President Joe Biden’s more welcoming approach to immigration.

The arrivals are creating joyous reunions across the country but also posing challenges for parents like Paredes, who paid thousands of dollars to smugglers to ferry her child to the United States and now must help her daughter ease into a new, unfamiliar life.

“I did it because I had to,” Paredes, 36, said of her decision to leave her children behind in Guatemala. She had hoped that her family of rural sharecroppers would benefit from the money she was able to send home.

“Growing up, we walked barefoot; we were so poor,” she said. “I wanted better for my children.”

Paredes, a single mother, had left behind not only Melissa, who was then 3, but her two older children, ages 9 and 6. She told them she would return in five years.

Joining an older brother in Oxnard, Calif., she found work packing cosmetics for a company owned by the Kardashian family by day and washing dishes at a restaurant by night.

“From the first month, I was sending as much money as possible to my mother and children,” said Paredes, who sent back about $600 a month.

Over the years, she helped her mother add a kitchen to her hut, buy appliances and cover the cost of doctors’ visits and medicine to treat her heart and liver ailments. For her children, the money she sent went to clothes, toys and education-related expenses.

In 2019, she managed to put together $15,000 to send for her oldest children, Kimberly, 15, and Yeison, 13.

“I thought Melissa was still too young to make the trip,” Paredes said.

Early this year, with a new president in the White House and news that families with young children were not being turned away at the border, Paredes’ brother decided to bring his daughter, son-in-law and 9-month-old granddaughter to Oxnard.

Melissa could accompany them, they said. Paredes agreed to pay $3,400 to a smuggler.

On Feb. 14, the four set out from Guatemala with other migrants heading north. Women and children squeezed into the back seat of the truck. Men traveled in the cargo bed.

About 10 days into the trip, they reached Mexico’s border with the United States, family members said, and were locked up with about 100 other migrants. Many days passed.

By the time it was their turn to go, Melissa said, she had replayed over and over in her head what she was supposed to do.

Once on U.S. soil, she was to distance herself from her relatives and surrender to Border Patrol agents. She was to say, “I came alone — I don’t know any of the migrants.” If asked whether she had family in the United States, she was to share her mother’s name, the city where she lived and her cellphone number, which she had memorized.

The separation tactic, she was told, would help assure that she would be allowed to remain, even if the adults in the party, as often happens, were expelled.

It was pitch black when Melissa, her relatives and another eight migrants followed a guide, only his flashlight illuminating the path to the river’s edge.

They boarded an inflatable raft. “We had to keep still like this,” Melissa said, bending down to demonstrate. “My shoes got all wet.”

Not long after they disembarked on the other side of the Rio Grande, the Border Patrol arrived. Within hours, Melissa boarded a van with several teenagers. They were dropped off at a tent structure in Donna, Texas, where unaccompanied minors were being processed.

Melissa remembered her mother’s phone number, and an agent called Paredes to inform her that her child was safe. It was March 4.

Much of the backlog has been cleared at Donna, but at the time, more than 1,000 young people were crammed into pods partitioned with clear plastic sheets. Some slept on blue metal benches because there was not enough room on the floor. Melissa said she shared a mattress on the ground with two other girls.

After several days, she was sent to stay with about five other children in a foster home in Corpus Christi, Texas. There, Melissa shared a room with a 13-year-old from El Salvador and a 10-yearold from Honduras, with whom she became fast friends, she said. The woman running the home, who spoke Spanish, took them to a store, where Melissa picked out a pink hoodie with a rainbow. They visited a playground. One Sunday, they went to church.

Back in Oxnard, Paredes prepared the paperwork required to regain custody of her child.

In late March, Paredes was informed that she had satisfied all the requirements, including a background check. All she had to do was pay $1,400 for a one-way airline ticket for Melissa and an escort to accompany her.

On a call, Melissa asked her mother whether she would recognize her. “How old was I when you left? I can’t remember you.”

“You will recognize me,” Paredes told her daughter. “We will make up for lost time.”

In Oxnard, Melissa was warmly greeted by her brother and sister, as well as her cousin, who had made the journey from Guatemala with her.

Like other unaccompanied minors entering illegally, Melissa has been placed in removal proceedings. Her family hopes she will win a reprieve.

On April 15, Melissa turned 11. After arriving home from the fields, Paredes changed and dashed out to pick up pizza, barbecue chicken and a tres leches cake.

Soon, family and friends began pouring into the apartment. But all the attention embarrassed and overwhelmed Melissa.

“This is her first birthday party,” her mother explained in private. Paredes had to push her to stand in front of the cake as the group serenaded her in Spanish, and then broke into “Happy Birthday.”

She blew out all 11 candles on her first try, smiling.