There are still families that are being separated at the border, months after having revoked the "zero...

There are still families that are being separated at the border, months after having revoked the "zero... https://assets.propublica.org/images/articles/20181102-border-separations-1200x630.jpg?1543644541

There are still families that are being separated at the border, months after having revoked the "zero tolerance"







































Brian Stauffer, special for ProPublica





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The Trump administration has once again separated families at the border, this time in a stealthy manner and justifying the act with imprecise and uncorroborated allegations against the parents, accusing them of offenses or misdemeanors that include the charge of re-entering the country illegally. .

In the last three months in New York, several lawyers from Catholic Charities, an organization that provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in that state, discovered at least 16 new cases of separation. They mention that they came to realize by chance, following their own clues after the minors were placed in temporary homes or guardianship institutions with almost no indication that they had reached the border with their parents, or without the release of that information. .

ProPublica ran into one of these cases late last month, when it received the desperate call of a Salvadoran father detained in South Texas, reporting that, literally, a Customs and Border Protection agent pulled his son out of his arms. 4-year-old Brayan when they crossed the border and asked for asylum. The father, named Julio, asked that his surname not be disclosed because he is fleeing gang violence and he is worried about the safety of his relatives in his country.

"I failed him," said the 27-year-old boy, crying desolately. "Everything he had done to be a good father was destroyed in an instant."



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ProPublica located Brayan, a small boy with reddish-blond hair and an adorable lisp, in a temporary guardianship agency in New York City. Then we communicate with the lawyer who represents him. Jodi Ziesemer, Lawyer Supervisor of Catholic Charities, had no idea, until that call, that Brayan had been separated from her father and commented that this chaos was disturbing because it seemed too much like the zero tolerance of a few months ago.

"It's so discouraging," Ziesemer said. "That policy is supposed to be over."

For official purposes, it was. On June 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that retracted the zero tolerance policy to enforce immigration laws. Under the policy, the authorities had orders to criminally prosecute any adult who was detained for crossing the border illegally, in addition to separating him from any minor companion. A week later, Federal Judge Dana M. Sabraw issued a mandate against the separations and ordered the government to reunify the affected families.

However, Judge Sabraw exempted cases in which minors were endangered and, crucially, did not impose norms nor supervision to govern decision making. The result, immigration lawyers say, was that immigration officials, based on the clues of an administration that still clearly believes that the separation of families is an effective deterrent, use any justification at their disposal, with or without corroboration. , to determine that immigrants are unfit or dangerous parents.

"If the authorities have the slightest evidence that one of the parents was a member of a gang, or that he has any kind of stain on his background," said Neha Desai, a senior attorney at the National Center for Juvenile Law (National Center for Youth Law); "Anything you can find to say that separation is for the good and health of the child, then you will separate them."





Brayan, a Salvadoran boy of four years.

(Courtesy of Mercedes Linares)





In an email message, a CBP official acknowledged that, in effect, they continue to separate immigrant families, but said separations "had nothing to do with zero tolerance." The official added that "this administration continues to comply with the law and separates adults and minors when required for the safety and protection of a minor." The official refused to say how many children have been separated from their parents for such reasons, which they refer to as protection for the child.

CBP officials explained that Brayan's case is like these. One of the officials commented that the agency had reviewed Julio's background, in a routine manner, "confirming that he was a member of the MS-13 gang." Spokeswoman Corry Schiermeyer refused to provide the agency's evidence to support her claim, saying only that it was "confidential for law enforcement purposes." He also did not want to say the reasons that CBP has to believe that Julio represents a danger for his son, adding that Judge Sabraw's order "did not prevent these separations, but, in fact, explicitly allowed DHS to continue that practice. previous".

The CBP also did not share any evidence with Georgia Evangelista, Julio's attorney, to support the assertion that he has links to the gangs. She even questions if it really exists.

(Evangelista also commented that last Tuesday, one of the government prosecutors reiterated the allegation before an immigration judge in South Texas, but could not give it the documentation calling it "confidential." The lawyer said that the immigration judge did not press to the prosecutor to disclose the evidence, but who had left his client released on bail of $ US $ 8 thousand Evangelista was frustrated with the result and commented: "How can we fight the charges without knowing what they are? ")

According to her, Julio arrived at the border in mid-September carrying a job written by a Salvadoran lawyer in which he explained that he was fleeing El Salvador with his son because he had been attacked and threatened by gangs in his country for years. At the request of lawyer Evangelista, the Salvadoran lawyer and the former employer of Julio sent sworn statements attesting to his character and mentioning that he had never participated in criminal acts.

"This makes me furious, they're not playing by the rules," Evangelista said, referring to the US immigration authorities. "They treat him as if he were a delinquent to be able to justify that his son was taken from him. Where are the tests? It's their word against theirs. It really makes me sick. "

Susan Watson, a lawyer for human rights and family law, said that in cases of guardianship of minors that do not include immigration issues, it would be impossible to carry out this type of activity without the approval of a judge. "According to the Constitution, a person has the right to legal process before he is separated from a child," he said. "Somewhere in the back of the Border Patrol there is a decision that does not comply with that rule."

In New York, Ziesemer says that the separated children identified by his organization include boys and girls between 2 and 17 years of age, in addition to Brayan. All arrived in that city without records indicating that they were separated from their parents at the border, or with the reasons for the separation. Weeks ago, the ACLU, the organization that filed the lawsuit related to the first round of separated families, sent a letter to the Justice Department listing their concerns about the new cases, specifically with regard to the justification of the separations and why the ACLU had not received knowledge about it.

Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer in charge of the family separation lawsuit filed by the ACLU in the spring, said that "if the government keeps secretly separating children, and does so based on weak pretexts, that activity would be Evidently unconstitutional and will have to return to court.

Lawyers for the ACLU and Catholic Charities say that the DOJ responded by saying that it has no obligation to inform the ACLU of the new separations, given that these were not carried out as part of the zero tolerance policy. The agency said that in fourteen of the seventeen cases mentioned in the ACLU office, the minors were taken from the custody of their parents because the authorities suspected that they had some criminal record that made them unfit, or even dangerous in their lives. that role. However, the DOJ did not specify the alleged suspected crimes of the parents or the evidence that the authorities have to support their allegations.

The ACLU, and other groups dedicated to representing immigrant children, commented that the secrecy of the DOJ is quite disturbing for several reasons. They are concerned that the Department of Homeland Security has allowed officials without formal training in child custody issues, primarily Border Patrol agents, to make decisions based on rules that could violate the spirit of the court order, and that would never be valid. for non-migratory cases. Ziesemer has spoken with family members and social workers and says he suspects that at least eight of these cases are from parents whose crime is having re-entered the country illegally. Illegal re-entry into the country is a felony, although it was not typical in those cases for previous administrations to separate families. Ziesemer said that the allegations presented by the government to justify the separations in eight additional cases were either imprecise or not corroborated. The last case she detected is about a father who was hospitalized.

"The government's position is that, because these cases are not part of the zero tolerance, it is not necessary to inform us about it. Not us, or anyone else, "said Ziesemer. "For our part, we maintain that there must be some supervision when it comes to children who are alienated from their parents."

The Brayan case is a vivid example of how the authorities interpret the court order to allow the separation of a family.

I found out about him by accident. At the beginning of last month, after the government report was published in which it was indicated that more than 2,600 immigrant children were separated from their families under the policy of zero tolerance, and only had under their care a child under 5 years. I decided to find him thinking that his case would be a captivating final point of the story I published this year about Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, the girl whose cries were recorded at the Border Patrol's facilities in June. That recording initiated the storm of rage that tipped the balance against the policy of separation of families imposed by the Trump administration.



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Thelma O. Garcia, a lawyer at the border, said she had represented Wilder Hilario Maldonado Cabrera, a six-year-old Salvadoran boy placed in a temporary guardianship home in San Antonio. Wilder was separated from his father in June, the lawyer said, and had not been reunited with him because the father had a 10-year arrest warrant for driving while intoxicated in the state of Florida.

That father, Hilario Maldonado, contacted me from the Pearsall prison in South Texas. On the call she told me that she had tried to keep in touch with Wilder by phone, but that the social worker in charge did not always answer the call. When he was able to connect, he said that Wilder, a chubby, precocious kid, scolded him for not going for him to return him home.

I told Mr. Maldonado that perhaps he would be one of the last parents who would live this separation, because the government had agreed to cease them.

Mr. Maldonado (39) replied that this was not true and that the separations continued because he knew of a case.

Minutes later I received the call from Julio, also detained in the same center. I heard his desperate voice, full of weeping and pleading for answers when he told me that he had surrendered along with Brayan to the authorities just across the border to ask for asylum. He also said that he had informed the immigration agents that his mother, who lives in Austin, Texas, was willing to help him locate himself. Seven days later, a Border Patrol agent shouted at Brayan, who was wearing a SpongeBob Square Pants shirt.

Julio said that all he knew was that his son was somewhere in New York. As soon as we hung up, I called lawyer Ziesemer from Catholic Charities, an organization hired by the government to provide legal services to unaccompanied minors in that city. I asked him if he had heard about Brayan.

"Yes, we know that guy," Ziesemer answered quickly, "but we did not know he had been separated from his father."

I heard her obviously surprised. "Until his call, all he had was his name on a list," he said.

Immediately, Ziesemer arranged for Brayan to be taken to his office since the child was in a foster home. Because of his experience, he did not anticipate much of that first visit. It was likely that Brayan was afraid apart from being a boy of only 4 years. To make him feel comfortable, he offered him a box of crayons and a book to draw about Spider-Man.

The little boy connected with her quickly, showing her his drawings, imitating the movements of the character in the cartoons, and showing her his scribbles when she asked him to write his name on a sheet of paper. However, and corroborating what she expected, the child was too young to make sense of what had happened at the border, much less to explain it to an adult he had just met. His lisp also made it difficult for Ziesemer to understand how little he could tell her.

After the visit, the lawyer commented how exasperating it was to have to interrogate a child, also mentioning the terror of thinking that there could be other minors like him sunk in the lists.

"We, together with the social workers and the consulates, do everything possible to fill the gaps and determine where these children come from," he said. "But that means that days and weeks go by without many of them knowing the whereabouts of their parents; and vice versa. And, it is not necessary that it be so, it should not be like that ".

I moved to Pearsall to meet Julio after the meeting between Ziesemer and Brayan. He told me that he had fled his country with his son because street gangs threatened him with killing him when they learned that he had reported one of his members to the police. His wife and stepson stayed there because they did not have enough money to come together. I also spoke with his wife, and she informed me that she was hiding in her parents' house because she did not want the gang members to find her in theirs if they were to look for her husband.

The photographs sent by his family show Julio with a police face, strong and with shaved hair. But, after a month in detention, his appearance was rather pale and discouraged. He was wearing the uniform of the detention center and his dark brown hair, although well combed. He does not have tattoos, something common in Central American gangsters.













Between tears, Julio told me that he mentally reviewed the days when he arrived at the border to try to understand why the authorities had taken away his son. Julio and Brayan had been detained in the now famous "refrigerator," the air-conditioned detention facility that was the first stop for most of the immigrants intercepted at the border. Brayan began to have a high fever and they had to take him to the hospital to treat him. The Border Patrol agent who took them scolded Julio for bringing such a small child on such a horrific journey. Would that be why they took his son? Was it because the agents saw the color of Brayan's hair and did not believe that he was his father?

Julio wonders if he was tricked into signing a document in the hospital (since they were all in English) with which he gave his rights to his son. Was it because he was arrested for robbery once in El Salvador, even though he was exonerated two days later when the authorities realized they had the wrong person? Why did you consider it dangerous for your son?

It was really from my part that Julio found out that the Border Patrol agents took Brayan because he suspected he was a gang member. The revealed thing knocked him down enough. He also confused him, because, at the same time that CBP considered him a gang member, DHS, another government agency, found that his asylum request, in which Julio claimed to have been a victim of gang violence, was convincing enough to be heard by an immigration judge.

At the beginning of October, Julio had met with an asylum officer for what is known as an interview to determine a credible fear. According to the report of the same, provided by Julio to ProPublica, the asylum officer not only asked him why he had fled El Salvador, but also if he had a criminal record. These are several of the questions: Have you committed a crime in any country? Have you hurt a person for any reason? Even if you did not want to do it, did you help someone else hurt one or more people? Have you been arrested or convicted of a crime? Was he a member of a gang?

Julio answered no to all the questions. The asylum officer who conducted the interview ruled that his information was credible. In addition, and significantly, he also indicated that he had not received derogatory information or criminal records that automatically disqualified Julio to automatically obtain asylum.

The discrepancy reflects the differences between the legal norms of asylum and family separation. While the decision of the asylum officer is subject to review by a judge, Julio has a hearing next Tuesday, the decision of the Border Patrol to take his son does not have that requirement.



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"I really do not know what kind of information they have about Julio, if they have anything," said lawyer Evangelista. "They have all the discretion possible to separate him from the minor. They can do whatever they want and without having to explain the whys. "

Julio said that his own father had abandoned him when he was about Brayan's age. His mother then went to the United States when he was 7 years old. He commented that he swore never to do that to Brayan and that's why he had not left him in El Salvador. Now he wonders if that was a mistake. Julio commented that every time he spoke with Brayan on the phone he felt they were moving farther away.

"He tells me: 'You are not my dad anymore. I have a new dad '", Julio comments about his son, adding:" He does not even say dad, but daddy. I never taught him that word. "

In New York, attorney Ziesemer says she worries that the separation of families is beginning again.

He commented that seeing Brayan in his office recalled the faces of more than four hundred separated children who had passed by during the summer. As a point of contact for Catholic Charities during the crisis, he said that he got to know each one of those boys and girls by name. Even a 9-year-old girl had a panic attack when she was asked to enter a room with her sister, because she thought Ziesemer was going to take the sister the same way the officers took her mother. "There was a time when we had to hold a meeting with all the staff to explain why the conference room was full of crying children," he said.

Catholic Charities, the ACLU and several other important immigrant assistance groups led the reunification of families by calling parents still detained in immigration centers, and dispatching staff to Central America to locate those who had already been deported. Apart from the "enormous and heavy task" of that reunification, Ziesemer said, there was an avalanche of calls and e-mail from Congress and the consulates and the media, all in search of information related to the separations.

Ziesemer also commented that she and her team worked night and morning for months and that although there are still several dozen children still waiting to be reunited with their parents, she had thought that things were coming to an end. It was then that he began to see new cases like Brayan's, with certain elements similar to those of before.





Brayan the grandmother in Austin, Texas, equipped with a bedroom in anticipation of her arrival.

(Courtesy of Mercedes Linares)





Ziesemer did not know much about Brayan apart from the information he got from him when he met him. It was then that I shared with her what she had come to know about him for his family: that he could eat four cooked eggs in one sitting; that he loved Lighting McQueen, the character in the Pixar car movie; and that he had a puppy named Lucky whom he insisted on seeing when he made video calls with his mother on WhatsApp. His grandmother in Austin had him ready for a room full of Mickey Mouse dolls, remote control carts and winter coats. I also told him of Julio's dismay when Brayan said "Daddy".

"A couple of weeks is a long time for a child to be his age," he commented about him. "They begin to detach themselves from people, even their parents."





Translation by Mati Vargas-Gibson.







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