Daily Times

It took 85 days for Olivia Caceres to retrieve her baby boy, pulled from his father’s arms at the US border, a traumatic experience many more parents face to reunite with children separated under President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Now nearly 20 months old, Mateo was returned to his family on Feb. 8 after a battle across borders, officialdom and languages. He was filthy and terrified of the dark, his mother said. Months later, the boy still screeches even as Caceres rocks him on her chest, sometimes until dawn.

The Salvadoran family’s story of struggle in US immigration detention presaged what was to come: Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that led to more than 2,300 migrant children being separated from parents in recent weeks.

Caceres’ quest to find her child foreshadows the long road ahead for many immigrant families after Trump reversed the separation policy and directed agencies to begin reuniting families this week.

Last year, Caceres, her husband Jose Demar Fuentes, and their children Mateo and five-year-old Andree, fled El Salvador where gangs had demanded protection money, and crossed Mexico in one of the regular ‘caravans’ of migrants that travel together for safety.

On Nov. 12, Fuentes sought asylum at the US-Mexican border, with Mateo in his arms, citing the gang threats. Caceres was due to follow a few days later with Andree.

But Caceres heard that US immigration officials had taken Mateo from Fuentes on Nov. 16, as Fuentes was being transferred to a San Diego detention center. Still in Tijuana, she began a frantic search for her son.

When she finally got Mateo back in February, “he looked like he hadn’t been bathed in three months”, said Caceres in a telephone interview with Reuters this week from Los Angeles.

“It was very hard to see the condition he was in. I don’t want to imagine that mountain of children, how they care for them,” she said, choking on tears.

The potential consequences of such separations include impacts on brain development and mental health, as well as persistent behavioral and academic problems, especially for under-fives, child development experts say.

That first night, Mateo was inconsolable as Caceres held him tight, whispering he was “with your mama,” she said.

Caceres had finally located Mateo at a facility in Texas. The phone number for the facility she provided to Reuters is registered to International Educational Services Inc (IES).

A nonprofit, IES closed its centers in Texas in March after losing funding from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to local media reports. A spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission confirmed that the facilities were inactive.

That agency found various violations during its inspection of IES facilities, including improper administration of medication, according to the agency’s website.

In a statement to local media, IES did not say why it shuttered the facilities. ORR did not immediately respond to request for comment. There was no answer at IES’ listed phone number or from employees’ emails. Texas HHS did not provide a reason for the closure.

‘He’s Here’

Locating Mateo took Caceres a week of phone calls to similar institutions on numbers she was given after speaking to a hotline for immigrant parents separated from their children.

Caceres called some numbers 10 times to get an answer. One official said Mateo was not entered into the system at all.

For a time, it seemed her son did not exist in US bureaucracy.

On the seventh day of calls, late in November, she got through to IES.

“Yes, he’s here,” the person at the end of the line said. “Are you the mother?”

Shaking with relief, she asked for information on Mateo’s health, his mood, how he was being fed and how he was sleeping.

They would give her the information, they said, but first needed proof of parentage.

With help from a pro-bono lawyer, Caceres emailed the documents she had: Mateo’s birth certificate, a hospital form with the baby’s footprints and her Salvadoran identity card.

Published in Daily Times, June 23^rd 2018.