Months after the Trump administration ripped four-year-old Brayan from the arms of his dad, Julio, at the U.S./Mexico border over a false allegation of gang affiliation, officials have backtracked, ProPublica reports, returning the boy to Julio this week. “He feels skinnier to me,” he said, embracing the child at a Texas airport. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Border officials used a loophole in a judge’s order to separate Brayan and Julio, claiming that Julio, a Salvadoran asylum seeker who was fleeing gang violence and carried with him “sworn statements from his former employer vouching for his character,” was himself a gang member. Officials still haven’t provided any evidence of Julio’s supposed gang affiliation to ProPublica, the New York agency that held the child for weeks, and, astoundingly, to a judge.
”So, two weeks ago, an immigration judge released Julio from detention on bond to pursue his asylum claim. And late Tuesday night, authorities returned Brayan to his dad in Austin, where Julio’s mother lives,” ProPublica continues. “I still don’t understand why they did this to us,” Julio said. “I guess they can do whatever they want.”
Immigration officials are still doing it, separating yet another father from his children due to claims of gang affiliation while yet again refusing to show any evidence.
Carlos Arias, also a Salvadoran asylum seeker fleeing gangs who threatened to kill his children unless he paid a fortune in ransom, said that officials forced him to take off his shirt in search of MS-13 affiliated tattoos, then “expressing surprise when he had no tattoos.” But unlike Julio and Brayan, Carlos and his two children, 11-year-old Alison and 7-year-old Carlos, are still detained and separated from each other by hundreds of miles. “I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye,” he said.
It’s 140 days past a federal judge’s reunification deadline, the Trump administration still has over 170 kids torn from families due to the “zero tolerance” policy in U.S. custody, despite a White House PR stunt purporting to end family separation this past June. Officials are still tearing families apart at the border, and children are still suffering. Family separation remains a crisis.