Migrant Mother Finally Regains Full Custody of Her Three Children In New York

A Guatemalan mother whose three children were sent to New York after she was detained in Arizona now has full custody of them again.

On Friday afternoon, Yeni Gonzalez Garcia and her children emerged from the Cayuga Centers foster care agency in East Harlem to the applause of supporters. Eleven year-old Lester, nine year-old Jamelin and six year-old Deyuin smiled for a throng of reporters and cameras on Park Avenue under the noisy Metro North railroad tracks. The boys wore plain red T-shirts and Jamelin wore a blue Minnie Mouse T-shirt. All three carried knapsacks on their backs and stood by their mother quietly as adults addressed the media.

"I want to send a message to all those moms," Gonzalez Garcia said in Spanish, referring to the other mothers she met in detention. "Keep fighting, because with the help of all these people and with the help of God you're going to achieve what you want."

She and her attorney, Jose Xavier Orochena, credited U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat, other elected officials and the public for pressuring the federal government. They were joined by the city's immigrant affairs commissioner, State Senator Michael Gianaris and the counsel to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Gonzalez Garcia, 29, was separated from her children after they illegally crossed the U.S. border in May.  But after being released on bond from the Eloy, Arizona detention center and coming to New York earlier this month, she was only allowed to visit her children at the Cayuga Centers office in East Harlem. The federally-contracted agency had placed her three children with a foster family after they were sent to New York by the government.

The federal government was requiring lengthy background checks for parents to reclaim their kids including fingerprints, DNA checks and proof of sufficient income. But those requirements were dropped this week, after the government failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite all children under the age of five who had been separated from their migrant parents by the Trump Administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy.

Gonzalez Garcia's lawyer, Jose Xavier Orochena, said he got word late Thursday night that his client could reclaim her children. He then contacted her as she was eating dinner with Julie Schwietert Collazo, the Long Island City woman who started Immigrant Families Together to pay Gonzalez Garcia's bond after hearing an interview with Orochena on WNYC.

"We were worried that maybe something got lost in translation," said Collazo, who initially couldn't believe the good news. 

She said her organization has continued raising bond money for six other moms to get out of detention and see their children. One flew to New York late Thursday night from Arizona with Orochena, after he helped get her released from the Eloy Detention Center.

The lawyer said she's also from Guatemala and has two children at Cayuga Centers. One is 15 years old and lied to his five year-old brother by telling him their mom was "working."

"Finally mom is no longer working," Orochena said.

He said Gonzalez-Garcia helped him connect with 22 other moms in detention. Collazo and her team of fundraisers aim to help them all. She says they've raised almost $170,000 and that "we are going to do this, if we have to, one by one, to do what the government is not going to do."

"Don't piss off mothers because this is what happens," Orochena added. "They will be able to mobilize a lot of people."

Gonzalez Garcia said she and her children are planning to head to North Carolina early next week to stay with relatives while she pursues her asylum case. She told WNYC she was afraid a gang would recruit her oldest son, and that people already tried to break into her house.

Collazo was inside Cayuga's office as Gonzalez Garcia reclaimed her children. She said they looked happy to be reunited with their mother. "There's relief on all sides that she's not just coming here for a visit today," she said, as the family left Cayuga's office in East Harlem for the last time.