Tearful meeting for mom, separated daughter at the border



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It was almost two months since Buena Ventura Martin Godinez saw his 7 year old daughter after the scared young mother was separated from her family trying to move from Mexico to the United States. They spoke in tears over the phone, but seeing her for the first time Sunday at the Miami Airport, she caught the child in a tight hug, tears running down her cheeks during a crash. meeting that she feared would never happen.

"I feel very happy now and to complete my joy I would like my husband to be released," Martin said in Spanish as his daughter Janne grabbed a stuffed dog and blue balloons and played with her young brother to claim baggage.

Martin took his Mexican son to the United States in May, fleeing what she said were threats from violent local gangsters demanding money in their city Born in northwestern Guatemala, her husband followed two weeks later with the girl.

But the family was captured by the Border Patrol and dispersed under President Gordon Trump's unscrupulous immigration policy Families to Separate Crossing the Border Her husband, Pedro Godinez Aguilar, has been convicted of the crime of illegal entry into the United States and is waiting for some deportation to an Atlanta prison. been detained for a week with her baby in Arizona and Texas, sometimes sleeping on the concrete floor of a detention center before being released. She now wears a heavy black surveillance device attached to her ankle. She and her baby boy are with parents in a city south of Miami.

The little girl was under the care of a Michigan Child Protection Agency and phoned her mother to ask her when they would be reunited. 19659002] The family is one of the thousands who have been trying to find refuge in the United States in recent weeks to be caught in the harsh reality of an immigration system that has never before been as welcoming as hoping many desperate migrants. , with the separation of parents of children being used as a means of discouraging illegal immigration.

More families cross the southwestern border of Guatemala than any other nation, with 29,278 families apprehended between October and the end of May.

Martin and her husband could easily have been apprehended under the previous administration and should have been fighting for asylum. But the father would not have been pursued for a first crossing; He would probably have been briefly detained with his daughter, and then released with a surveillance device while they were fighting their future in court. Their daughter would not have been shipped alone across the country, leaving them desperate to recover her.

At Sunday's moving meeting, the child's uncle, Nicolas Godinez, said his family was worried about his return. They had heard unsubstantiated rumors that the US government was putting children like Janne to adoption.

"To receive her is the most wonderful thing I can receive," he says through tears

Martin, who was working as a nurse. In Guatemala, she and her husband decided to leave San Juan Atitan because masked men were demanding extortion payments from her husband's small business to sell Internet access

They traveled by bus to the south from the border. She said they did not use smugglers, although many Central Americans do so and have been paying for them for years. Martin said that she waded through the water up to the knees with several other migrants and was immediately apprehended. The court records show that her husband was arrested in the same area on May 16.

Martin received help from a local activist since she could not afford to pay for a lawyer. She worked at a nearby nursery, earning $ 9 an hour. She puts her baby in daycare while she presses her file for asylum.

While the grateful mother grabbed her daughter on Sunday, she warned other families

"I would advise people to find another country to take refuge … because the law is very hard, They have no heart, "she said with tears running down her cheeks. "Your child is a treasure and separating them is very painful."

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