The Reyes-Mejía family had a lot to celebrate this past Christmas, and it wasn’t just because it was their first one here in America. It was because the family—ripped apart at the southern border last year under the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy—was able to celebrate it together. “We’re just happy to be together,” dad Ever said, “the four of us.”
But for months last year, the family, fleeing gang violence in Honduras, was splintered when 3-year-old Sammy was stolen from Ever by immigration officials. “One morning at a detention facility, Mr. Reyes-Mejía said officials told him he needed to fill out some paperwork. He left the boy asleep, nestled under a blanket. Only then did he learn he would be separated from his son.”
Sammy eventually became one of the first children to be released under a court order last summer, but it was a bittersweet reunion. When Sammy later reunited with his mom, it was like he was meeting a stranger. “I’m your mommy, sweetheart, I’m your mommy,” she cried as the boy squirmed out of her arms. She turned, crying to her husband: “Ever, what’s wrong with my son?”
“Mr. Reyes-Mejía’s wife, who was devastated by her son’s rejection at the airport, said she persisted in trying to reconnect with him,” the family told the Wall Street Journal. “’I had you here in my belly,’ she would tell him. She showed him pictures of him kissing her. She reminded him of the food he liked during their time in Mexico. After about two months, she said, his behavior changed. He called her ‘Mamá’ again.”
The family doesn’t regret their journey, because they say that when they step outside their Houston apartment, they feel safe. “We feel privileged,” Sammy’s mother said. “We are reborn.” For now, because they can’t legally work, they are depending on local charities for assistance as they wait for their asylum petitions to play out in immigration court.
Family separation remains a crisis, because other children kidnapped from their families are still waiting for their freedom. It is now 172 days past the judge’s reunification deadline, and kids are still in U.S. custody, according to the most recently available filing in a related lawsuit. This has been and continues to be a humanitarian disaster. The government’s response, meanwhile, has been to scoff at the lawsuit demanding mental health counseling costs for kids like Sammy.