Allison Madrid’s grandmother lives in a village named Armenia in Western El Salvador. When she heard, as did pretty much everyone else in the Western World, the heartbreaking audio of separated children pleading with border cops for their mothers and fathers, Ana Gloria Henríquez immediately recognized her granddaughter’s voice.
Washington Post
”Ana Gloria Henríquez instantly recognized her granddaughter’s sobs.
The 6-year-old girl who was pleading with Border Patrol officials for her mother, begging for her aunt — on the excruciating audio published by ProPublica that helped galvanize opposition to family separations — had set out just weeks before from this village in the rolling foothills of western El Salvador, leaving behind her grandmother and the family mutt, Cookie.
The girl, Allison Ximena Valencia Madrid, who goes by Ximena, was traveling toward Houston with her mother, Cindy Madrid, on a path well worn by this family. Cindy was the last of Henríquez’s three daughters to migrate in the past dozen years, a decision that many here consider the only viable way to avoid poverty and gangs. Two sisters had made it; earlier this month, Cindy and Ximena got caught.
“We’ve never had any problem until this law that Mr. Trump made,” said Henríquez, 58.”
Now Ana is alone in her rented house in Armenia, which her two daughters who made it safely into the U.S. and who were not caught up in drumpf’s drag net send her money to maintain.
I am sure that Allison’s grandmother’s fondest wish is that she and her mother would be free to join her aunts, at least one of whom’s phone number Allison holds in her heart and nimble brain - but fondest wishes rarely figure into a world stained by the presence and evil of drumpf, his ignorant followers and petty demons, and only the desire for a minimum showing of humanity remain:
“I want them to have an opportunity to be together,” Ana says
“And if they’re going to charge them, I want them to be held together.”
Amen to that Ana, we will do everything we can think of to make that happen.