Daily Times

Before deporting him in shackles last week, US immigration agents handed Honduran asylum-seeker Melvin Garcia his few possessions and a small blue wallet belonging to Daylin, the 12-year-old daughter they had taken from him.

Uncertain when he might see her again, after being barred from the United States by his deportation order, Garcia, 37, is one of an uncertain number of parents sent home without their children under the Trump administration.

Frustrated that immigrants and asylum seekers from Central America were often released into the United States to await court hearings, US President Donald Trump implemented a “zero tolerance policy” in April seeking to prosecute all adults who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally, including those traveling with children. This dramatically increased the number of families separated at the border.

Hours after he arrived back in Honduras alone on June 21, Garcia slumped in a concrete shack in a section of the town of Choloma controlled by Barrio 18, one of two gangs whose death threats he said he fled in March with Daylin.

Tortured with thoughts that he might not see Daylin for years, Garcia clutched at her wallet. Whenever he recalled his desperate search for her in US detention, he broke down, tears streaming off his face.

Trump reversed course last week, ordering an end to the family separations. But the government still had 2,047 children in custody as of Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told a US Senate committee, adding that reuniting them would be hard.

A federal judge ruled late on Tuesday that the government must reunite families that were split up after entering the country, but immigration lawyers warned that the situation was tremendously complicated for parents who were sent home without their children.

“There’s no structure in place, no legal structure in place to actually reunify the parents who’ve already been deported,” said Jenna Gilbert, managing attorney of the Los Angeles chapter of legal rights organization Human Rights First.

Reuters tracked at least six Central American migrants last week after they were deported while their children remained in US shelters or, as in the case of Garcia’s daughter, in the custody of sponsors.

Garcia’s deportation order, seen by Reuters, was issued by a Houston immigration judge on May 23. It does not say how long he is barred from returning to the United States, but the US Department of Justice has said people deported in such cases are typically excluded from re-entry for five years or more.

Under The Gun

After his wife and two other children left for the United States three years ago, Garcia said Daylin became his whole world.

Before seeking asylum in the United States, Garcia worked as a bus driver in one of the most violent countries in the Americas. He said colleague after colleague on the bus routes was shot dead for failing to pay the “war tax” demanded by Barrio-18 and the rival Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13 gang.

He fled with Daylin after someone pressed a gun to his own head.

When he requested asylum at the McAllen, Texas, port of entry on March 24, Garcia said he showed US authorities proof of Daylin’s parentage and news clippings of murdered drivers to back his asylum claim.

He had no criminal record, he said, showing Reuters a Honduran police document attesting to his clean history. Garcia said the attitude of US officials stunned him. “They asked her if she was pregnant. A girl of 12 years old.”

Published in Daily Times, June 29^th 2018.