Texas, United States
“My biggest fear is that they won’t hand me over to mine children“, Says the anguished Honduran sea Ruth, Who suffered greatly in the week he was slow to find his two children and his little sister in a system saturated with thousands of unaccompanied children in US Government custody
These days he anticipated the long bureaucratic nightmare he will have to face before he can meet with minors, aged 14, 10 and 9, and he fears that problems may arise that make it impossible to make the desire to meet a reality. -you are with them again.
Ruth, who asked Efe not to reveal her last name for security reasons, is counting the hours to be able to reunite with her children Denis, 10, and Jeremy, 14, and her sister Esther, 9. years.
WITHOUT KNOWING WHERE THEY ARE
“All the way I insisted they record my phone number, and they learned it, even my little sister,” insists the 37-year-old migrant.
Neither the agents of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) nor Ruth’s children contacted her to tell her where on the Texas border they were.
This Wednesday, Ruth managed to talk to a CBP agent who told her they were dealing with thousands of children and that all she could tell her was that the three minors were in the custody of border authorities.
“The system is incredibly complicated, if you don’t have the right tools it’s a very difficult task to find minors,” immigration lawyer Frances Arroyo told Efe, who helped Ruth take the first steps to find her children. children.
The jurist warns that the overwhelming arrival of unaccompanied children and immigrants at the border, coupled with the complexity and disorganization of the system, the lack of information and even the policies of the administration of former President Donald Trump they are creating a traffic jam that can end up harming minors.
This Thursday the Government reported that in March it had intercepted at the border a record number of minors unaccompanied by one of their parents or legal guardian.
The 18,890 minors found last month, twice as many as in February (9,431), are only a part of the 172,000 migrants intercepted at the border with Mexico and who are mostly expelled from the country.
A SUFFERING THAT COSTS
In this sense, activist Nora Sandigo warns Efe that these children “are exposed to a feeling of abandonment. They are torn emotionally.”
Sandigo, who runs a foundation that cares for children and teens with parents are arrested and deported for reasons migratory, Has had to diversify its goals and become these days a link to help bring together the thousands of children who have arrived alone at the border.
An example of this “harsh reality” as the activist defines it is the “alopecia” suffered by a five-year-old Mexican girl who crossed the border with her 9-year-old sister to reunite with her mother. who lived in Nebraska.
“The 5-year-old girl had gaps in her head. Her hair flakes had fallen out due to stress,” says Sandigo, who accompanied the girls on their way from Houston to Nebraska to reunite with their parent. last week.
Ruth is afraid that her sister will be separated from her children, as the little ones have become the main support of the 9-year-old.
But with the saturated facilities of minors who entered the country alone the delivery time and the place where they will be sent into the custody of the Department of Health and Services (HHS) it is impossible to calculate how long they will be separated, insists Arroyo .
Supporting CRITICISM
The overwhelming arrival of unaccompanied children has generated a wave of criticism against the Biden administration, both from Republicans who say their immigration policy has led to the current arrival of migrants and from the families themselves who venture to start a hard crossing in hopes of finding the borders open.
“They had nowhere to live, my parents’ house was swept away by the hurricane, and there was also a lot of violence, ”Ruth argues about the reasons that led her family to emigrate.
He adds that his children and sister did not arrive at the border alone. The little ones came from the hand of their grandfather, who made the decision not to cross the Bravo River with them thinking that this way the little ones had more options to stay in the US.
“He says that on this side of the river there were many families who had passed away and in less than a day deported. Even a lady who had a girl with Down syndrome. Then she made the decision to send them alone.” it has a knot in its throat.
60% of those arrested at the border, a total of 103,900, were immediately expelled under the so-called “Title 42”, a measure introduced by former President Donald Trump and which, with the covid-19 pandemic as to argument, it allows the Biden Government to expel adults traveling alone and families with children over 7 years of age.
Faced with the uncertainty of when she will be able to reunite with her children at her home in San Bernardino, California, Ruth is joined by the fact that her 53-year-old father has been missing at the border for more than a week. and she fears the worst.
“We don’t know where he is,” he says in a hushed voice.