Antonio crossed the US border with his 7-year-old daughter in June 2018, and was arrested by the Border Patrol.
The zero tolerance policy implemented by former President Donald Trump was in force at the time, separating thousands of immigrant parents from their children, including Antonio: this Honduran did not see his daughter again until a month later.
After six months, they were separated again:
"It feels as if he had died twice,"
explains Antonio (his last name is not published to protect him) in an interview with The Washington Post.
“Parting ourselves once was pretty horrible,” he sobs at his home in rural Honduras, where he was deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after a routine appointment in California.
When he was arrested, his daughter, Maily, was in his second grade class.
Since then he has not seen her again.
[Mexico gave in to Trump's immigration policy. What will López Obrador do now in the face of Biden's plans?]
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Antonio's story is not an isolated case, according to the newspaper report.
A federal court ordered the Trump administration to reunite the thousands of separated families under its zero tolerance policy, but many of those parents were released from detention without legal status in the United States.
They were thus able to reunite with their children, but were at
risk of deportation and a new separation
.
Antonio, a part-time mechanic, landed alone in Honduras on January 16, 2019. He was not allowed to say goodbye to his daughter before being deported.
Their second separation has lasted two years so far.
[A court allows the Government to resume the expulsions of unaccompanied immigrant children]
"Even after the court ordered the families reunited, the Trump Administration tried to re-separate them by deporting the parents," said Lee Gelernt, senior attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). .
"
Unbelievably, a separation was not enough for the Trump Administration
," he said in an interview with the newspaper.
How some families were separated twice
The Trump Administration separated at least 5,500 migrant children from their parents under its zero tolerance policy.
The
images of children staying alone
in makeshift detention centers in 2018 provoked a wave of anger and criticism.
Then, faced with the deep social rejection, the former president signed an executive order to end the practice, just hours before a judge canceled it.
In this December 2018 file photo, a Centra America boy runs down a hallway at a San Diego detention center (Gregory Bull).
AP
The ACLU announced in November that the parents of
666 children
who were separated at the border
have not yet been located
.
Since then, lawyers have learned that some of them were deported alone and thus separated again from their children.
In recent weeks, they have located more than a dozen immigrants in this situation in Central America.
Hundreds of other immigrants who belonged to the same family were released with different cases, usually
with pending deportation orders and without lawyers
.
Many parents were unaware of these orders, mistakenly assuming that reunification entailed a path to legal status.
[ICE arrests fall due to pandemic. Will Biden be able to crack down on the private prisons that profit from these arrests?]
"The government did not give these parents basic information about their cases when they were released to reunite with their children," said Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project.
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An analysis of approximately 2,000 cases of separated parents and children at the border shows that about 13% currently have removal orders, according to the National Reunited Families Assistance Project.
It is unclear how many of them have already been deported.
A letter to the president-elect to see his family
When Antonio was deported, he asked if his daughter could return with him to Honduras, along with the mother and sister of the little girl, but they told him to give custody to a relative in the United States or they would put her up for adoption, he says.
The little girl was originally with an uncle in California.
"I
just don't understand why they did this,
" said Maily, who is now 10 years old.
During the years they were separated, the girl looked for options so that her father could return to the country.
Last month, in his latest effort to reunite the family, he wrote a letter to then-president-elect Joe Biden.
["Biden is the hope we have": the migrant community eagerly awaits immigration reform]
Maily asked her to bring her family to America: "If she can do that,
I'll be the happiest girl in the world
."
Will families be reunited with the new Administration?
As the Biden administration prepares to launch a task force to potentially reunite hundreds of Central American families who were separated at the border, cases like Antonio's are a reminder of the complicated legal path that migrant families face.
"Biden is the hope we have": the migrant community is waiting impatiently for immigration reform
Jan. 28, 202101: 50
It's unclear
what legal status
the Biden Administration
will offer
reunified families and how it will protect them from deportation.
There are also no guarantees that those who were sent back to their countries will be able to return to the United States.
Child care specialists warn of the trauma suffered by children who have been separated not once, but twice.
"Every time it happens, the fear multiplies exponentially," said Ken Berrick, founder of the Seneca Family of Agencies, which is tasked with linking separated families with mental health providers.
