By Lourdes Hurtado
"Behave yourself and I know that we love you here. Your mom loves you and I do the same."
With those words and only through a video conference over the phone, Tomás Martín Caralampio, a Guatemalan immigrant who was deported to his country of origin in 2017, has been able to speak with his son, Juan Damián, since they were separated by immigration officials ago
. more than 5 years.
"It was November 24, 2017," recalled Caralampio, who was detained at the Mexican border with his son Damián.
That day, in an Arizona detention center office, he was told that he would be deported and his son Damien, a US citizen, would stay in the United States.
Juan Damián, a 19-year-old US citizen, was separated from his parents under a 'zero tolerance' policy.
Telemundo News
"Tears and tears were falling from my eyes, and so was he," he said in a recent interview with Noticias Telemundo, but the officers only asked him to fill out the paperwork so that Damián, 14 at the time, would be sent to social services.
Caralampio was in the detention center for 15 days.
He was then sent to a Colorado jail until he was returned to Guatemala.
His son went through three care homes until he reached the age of majority.
He is now 19 years old.
They haven't seen each other for five years.
For now, they are not eligible to be reunified for one simple reason: “He was not a citizen of the United States, it was just me.
They separated him from me for that and I think he is not fair, ”Damián said.
Tomás Martín Caralampio, a Guatemalan immigrant who was deported to his country of origin in 2017Noticias Telemundo
A legal resource to facilitate reunifications
In the summer of 2018, when it became known that thousands of immigrant children had been torn from their parents' arms
at the border, immigrant advocates sued the government of then-President Donald Trump to stop the separations and with the aim
of
force him to reunite them.
At the time, mixed-status families, including American children with immigrant parents, were also not known to have been separated.
That was the reason why
they were not included in that class action lawsuit.
Noticias Telemundo obtained a motion filed by lawyers in a federal court in California so that immigrant parents who were separated from their American children by the Trump Administration can request the Biden government to be reunited with their children.
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This is just the first step in a long process to make amends for the extensive damage caused by the 'zero tolerance' immigration policy.
In October of last year, Noticias Telemundo spoke with Michelle Brané, director of the Family Reunion Task Force, a body established by the president, Joe Biden.
Brané expressed the difficulties they have faced in identifying and finding those affected by the separations, because Trump Administration officials did not leave records of the separations.
The lawyer acknowledged that they were already aware that American children had been affected by Trump's policy.
"At this time, those cases have not been included [in the initial lawsuit], but we do know that some of those cases exist and we are working again with the reports that we have, with the NGOs that have presented cases to us, to see what that we can find," he said.
A Honduran mother and her 1-year-old son surrender to a Border Patrol member near McAllen, Texas, in June 2018.AP
"They were not documented in a way that we can easily find them," Brané explained.
If the court grants its approval to the request of the lawyers of the American Civil Liberties Union, parents with US children separated from their children and deported could return to the United States to reunite with them, through a humanitarian parole of three years,
as
already It has happened with more than 600 separated immigrant families.
It is an opportunity for which Caralampio prays.
"That is my need, I beg you, I repeat it again Mr. President [Joe Biden]. Give me that opportunity, give me that opportunity to be by my son's side in the United States of America," he said in an interview with Telemundo News.
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At the moment, the authorities ask these parents to register on the juntos.gov page so that they can start reviewing their cases.
Additionally, the Together and Free organization has made available the number (332) 244 5301, for those who need support.
The challenge of tracing separated families
Tracking separated immigrant families has been exceedingly complicated.
The challenge is now greater because with children in the
foster
care system or given up for adoption, there are even more obstacles to locating them.
For this reason, the defenders of these families also demand that those who implemented this family separation policy be held accountable.
"(It is a) criminal act. The Government must take action against the administration that made that policy and that caused so much damage to thousands of families that they are suffering permanent damage. It does not matter if they are citizen children or immigrants. The policy of 'tolerance zero' is a crime against humanity," said Gina Amato, an attorney with Public Counsel.
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It is estimated that nearly 5,500 children born abroad were separated from their parents.
Most of them spent weeks away from their families, although in some cases it was months.
They had different nationalities and ages, and hundreds of them were under 5 years of age.
As of February, there were still nearly 1,000 minors who had not been reunited with their parents.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Telemundo News that "under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the Family Reunification Task Force has reunited more than 660 children who were separated from their families under the policy of 'zero tolerance' of the previous administration".
["The happiest day of my life": the reunion of a family after being separated at the border]
It added that "the Task Force is tireless in its work to identify children who are still separated, facilitate their reunification with their families, provide support services to reunited families, and prevent future family separations. In addition to the children already identified, the Task Force is reviewing the records to identify other
children who are US citizens who may have been separated from their non-citizen parents."
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