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NEW YORK – (AP) – An immigrant father from Guatemala adores his discouraged teenage daughter during a 10-minute weekly phone call, while other parents wait weeks before the phone rings. .
Telephone conversations were held with his 5 year old son, detained in Texas, while a Honduran asylum seeker had a real date with his granddaughter and visited him in person.
Immigrant parents who have been separated from their children under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy with respect to illegal border crossings have difficulty communicating by any means possible to Age of the moment. international social media with sons and daughters kept in government-contracted facilities across the country. For most parents, phone calls were the only link to their children while separations dragged on for weeks
Honduran immigrant Carla Garcia waits every day in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for calls for impromptu telephone and video conversations with her son in a detention center in the United States. Texas – she can not return. She and Jonathan, 5, were separated after crossing the border together in late May. Garcia was released a month later with an ankle monitor and moved in with relatives.
"I was happy to be able to see it, and then it was even harder to see it from afar," she said. "He looked at me, worried."
Many parents say that it was difficult or impossible to keep their cool when children fall into tears, complain about loneliness, ask for clues as to when they might be released or think that They were abandoned.
"She was crying, inconsolable," said Guatemalan immigrant Josue Aguilar about her 16-year-old daughter, who he says is in a detention center somewhere in Texas. She said, "I do not want to be here anymore. "I can only tell him to try and have a little patience."
Aguilar says that he and his daughter just have time to console themselves before the end of the calls. They give him only 10 minutes
"They give him a call a week, ten minutes, it's just not enough time," said Aguilar, who moved to relatives' home in Atlanta after he freely. 19659003] In other cases, parents and children find creative ways to cope. A 15-year-old boy tells his 5-year-old brother that their separated mother was working and that's why they are separated, says the mother's attorney.
Adrian Velasquez persuaded a social worker to send him three photos of his 8-year-old son. The pictures show Jason doing math homework at a Texas government facility and standing beside smiling kids his age.
Velasquez said that his son had initially threatened to run away after separating from the Texas border authorities. A month later, he believes that the boy has adapted and will eventually be released without signs of emotional trauma.
"He is a very active child," said Velasquez. The Ministry of Justice last week tabled a plan to reunite more than 2,500 children aged 5 and over by the deadline set by the court on July 26. It is unclear how many of these families remain separated Number of releases accelerated this week in Texas
In rare cases, immigrant parents were allowed to go in person under the supervision of their children , authorities taking several weeks to check the background and custody of children. The asylum seeker and mother Digna Perez of El Salvador said the arrangement was stifling and upsetting.
"They did not feel free to talk to me that way – not as if I were alone with them," says Perez. 6 year old son and 6 year old daughter. She was separated from them at the end of May while they were traveling across Mexico to El Paso, Texas. "They will always have this memory when they are bigger, they will not forget that easily, the separation."
Mario Romero from Honduras recalled a one-hour visit with his 10-year-old child. girl, Fabiola, at the office of a child holding contractor in El Paso, Texas – a few blocks from the border with Mexico.
He brought a hamburger to share and told his daughter that he owed her another gift – – for a birthday that she spent in detention.
"I could see her, I could hold her in my arms," Romero said. "Thank God, I had the opportunity to kiss him."
Perez and Romero were reunited with their children on Monday.
Released from an immigration detention center on June 24, Manuel Marcelino Tzah played the detective to connect with his 11 year old daughter He called home in Guatemala and found that his daughter had left a work phone number with his mother.
"I started crying when I heard his voice" after two months, he said. "She also cried, I told her," Do not worry, we'll be together soon. "
They were reunited in a New York airport on Tuesday.
Parents who remain in detention
Attorney Jose Xavier Orochena said that the imprisoned immigrant parents that he represented were at the mercy of social workers coordinating outgoing calls from the Cayuga Center in New York
wait until Cayuga calls the mother, "he said. "From the detention center, no one can call the social worker." 19659009 Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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