Immigrant Mom Gets to Visit Her Kids, but Custody Is Another Hurdle
A Guatemalan mother was able to see her three children again Tuesday after being apart for a month and a half.
Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia was separated from her kids in May by the U.S. government under the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" policy. After the family illegally crossed the border, she was detained in Arizona and the government sent her children to the Cayuga Centers foster care agency in New York.
Standing outside the agency's East Harlem office on Tuesday, she recalled what she said when the children were taken from her at a processing center for immigrants. "I promised them that I was going to get them," she said.
When they finally saw each other again on Tuesday, she said, "I hugged them and they cried when they saw me and I told them I had promised you that I was going to return for you, and now here I am."
For now, however, Gonzalez-Garcia can only visit with her children. Even though a California judge ruled that the government must reunite the families quickly, the Office of Refugee Resettlement requires parents to clear a background check to make sure they don't pose any danger and can care for their kids - the same requirements as for a sponsor family.
Gonzalez-Garcia's lawyer, José Xavier Orochena, said this includes new fingerprints, a home visit and proof of income. After meeting with Cayuga Centers on Tuesday, he said he learned this could take two months because of a backlog with a government contractor.
Orochena said the children also have relatives in North Carolina who already started a background check to sponsor them. If they get cleared first, everyone will go to North Carolina while they wait out the mother's asylum case.
Orochena is based in New York and met his client for the first time last Thursday, when he flew to Arizona as she was released from the Eloy Detention Center. Her $7,500 bond was paid that morning through a fundraising drive launched by Julie Schwietert Collazo. The Long Island City resident said she was already collecting toys and clothes for migrant kids sent to New York when she heard WNYC's interview with Orochena about Gonzalez-Garcia's case.
She set up a Go Fund Me page with a team of people in New York and New Jersey, and said they raised more than enough money to post the bond. But she said their effort isn't just about raising money.
"It's about making sure that this person has the community of support that will continue to follow along with them until their case is resolved," she said, adding that chefs and psychologists have offered services to help the family.
Collazo said she's now looking to do the same for other migrants in detention who were separated from their children.
"What we're trying to do, my group, is take what we've learned in the past week — which is a lot — put it into a tool-kit kind of format," she explained. "So that ... people who believe that they have the network that can do this will follow a similar format."
She's also working with Orochena because he met other moms at the Eloy Detention Center who were separated from their children. He said there are 12 who now want his help including a few whose kids were sent to New York. If he can negotiate bonds for them, by proving they won't be a flight risk - like he did for Gonzalez-Garcia because of help from the family in North Carolina - he said others can be out with the help of fundraising.Â
Collazo said Gonzalez-Garcia can stay in New York as long as it takes for the red tape to clear, thanks to generous offers of housing. She's allowed to visit with her children each day at Cayuga Centers while they continue to stay with their foster family.
"I hope to God this process moves as quickly as possible," she said. "Because I don't ever want to leave their arms again."
This story was reported with help from Celia Mendoza of Voice of America.
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