{"id":600840,"date":"2018-07-07T07:00:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-07T13:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=600840"},"modified":"2018-07-09T14:28:37","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T20:28:37","slug":"six-year-old-still-separated-from-mother-who-must-parent-from-1000-miles-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/07\/six-year-old-still-separated-from-mother-who-must-parent-from-1000-miles-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Six-year-old still separated from mother, who must parent from 1,000 miles away"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_594462\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-594462\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2-771x514.jpg\" alt=\"Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid\" width=\"771\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2-771x514.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2-336x224.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2-1170x780.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/20180621-immigration-maze-3x2.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Facebook<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The last time Cindy Madrid Henriquez, a Salvadoran immigrant, spoke to her 6-year-old daughter Jimena on the telephone, the little girl, who is in an Arizona shelter, began by complaining about having to wash her hair with bar soap instead of shampoo. Her scalp was dry and itchy. She had dandruff. Then her questions grew into fears: What if her hair started to fall out? What if her scalp became infected? When, she finally wailed, was her mother going to come and save her?<\/p>\n<p>Madrid, who is in a detention facility 1,000 miles away in south Texas, said most phone calls with her daughter go that way: a relatively mundane dilemma spirals into a crisis. And there\u2019s not much that Madrid can do, except to stay calm and talk her daughter off her emotional ledges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe says over and over, \u2018Mommy, I want to be with you,\u2019\u201d said Madrid, who is 29. \u201cI tell her, \u2018I know. We\u2019ll be together soon. Until then, you have to be strong.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those phone calls, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, are what have kept her strong, she said, in the three weeks since immigration authorities separated her from her only child as part of the Trump administration\u2019s zero tolerance enforcement policy, which called for criminal prosecutions of all people caught illegally crossing the border \u2014 including those, like Madrid, who subsequently request asylum. The pair\u2019s plight captivated people around the world when ProPublica released a recording that was secretly made inside a Border Patrol detention facility and captured Jimena\u2019s distraught cries for help after agents separated her from her mother.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article comes from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/the-6-year-old-heard-on-border-facility-audiotape-is-still-separated-from-her-mother-who-must-parent-from-thousand-miles-away\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ProPublica<\/a>, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom.\u00a0Sign up for their\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.propublica.org\/forms\/newsletter_daily_email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Her pleas gave voice to the impact the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown was having on the more than 2,300 children who were separated from their parents since the policy was officially launched in March \u2014 though recent reports indicate that hundreds more families were swept up in a test pilot of the program conducted last year. Mounting political pressure forced the administration to announce that it would stop separating immigrants from their children and reunify those who had already been affected. Still, there\u2019s been no relief for those like Madrid and her daughter. On the contrary, her case shows that the retreat from zero tolerance could be as messy and painful as the launch, as she and other immigrant families seek to be reunited with their children, while pursuing separate claims for asylum.<\/p>\n<p>The administration\u2019s moves \u2014 or lack of them \u2014 indicate that it doesn\u2019t want asylum seekers to have it both ways, despite court rulings ordering them to do so. In scathing terms last week, a federal judge in San Diego issued an injunction against the family separations and instructed the administration to reunite immigrant children with their parents by July 26. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have repeatedly asserted that they have a \u201cwell-coordinated process,\u201d for fulfilling that order, but so far there\u2019s been little sign of it.<\/p>\n<p>Instead the administration remains committed to the goals that inspired zero tolerance in the first place, deterring people from seeking asylum, which it considers a \u201cloophole\u201d that undeserving immigrants use to gain legal entry into the country. The administration has sought to overturn a decades-old ruling that prohibits immigrant children from being detained more than 20 days. Immigrants already living in the United States who are related to the children being held in shelters and express a willingness to care for them are required to assume exorbitant travel costs, and submit to DNA tests, fingerprinting and other background checks without assurances that the information won\u2019t be used for other purposes. Border Patrol agents have physically turned away people who present themselves for asylum at ports of entry, saying there isn\u2019t enough room to process new petitioners. Meanwhile, immigration judges are setting bonds so high that detainees cannot afford to pay them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheir bottom line is they want people to be detained through the asylum process,\u201d said Joan Friedland, a veteran immigration lawyer in New Mexico. \u201cIt\u2019s the most punitive. It\u2019s where people are least likely to have access to a lawyer and prevail. It makes people want to give up their claims and return to their home countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Outside of carefully scripted press calls, officials at ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Health and Human Services rarely answer even the most basic questions from the media about the fate of the parents who have been separated from their children, including how many are still being detained, how many have been deported and how many have been reunified. And when they do answer questions, they offer shifting statistics and rationales.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In a media call Thursday, led by HHS Secretary Alex M. Azar, the administration said that it had some 3,000 children in its care \u2014 a much larger number than the 2,057 he reported to Congress last week. Authorities, he said, had not determined how many of those children had been separated as a result of zero tolerance and how many had simply gotten separated from their parents during their journeys. His agency has brought on an additional 230 people in order to comply with the San Diego court\u2019s reunification deadline, he said, although he could not say how many children had been reunited with their parents so far. Last week, Azar told Congress that 500 children had been reunited.<\/p>\n<p>By following Madrid and Jimena, I hoped to track the process and its impact on those going through it. But even that\u2019s come up against arbitrary rules and resistance. Over the past week, I have made several attempts to visit Madrid. After agreeing to meet with me over the phone, Madrid declined my official request. She subsequently wrote and signed two letters saying she had made a mistake and expressing an interest in seeing me. But when I shared those letters with ICE officials in Texas, they refused to process a new request. In an email, spokesman Carl Rusnok accused me of \u201cbadgering\u201d Madrid, and wrote, \u201cFor our already EXTREMELY busy ICE officers to repeatedly ask the same individual about a request from the same media outlet might be construed as coercive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result, I\u2019ve only been able to speak with Madrid by telephone, which as anyone who has had to rely on detention center phones knows, is a flawed and stressful alternative. For unclear reasons, the sound quality of the calls is terrible: Madrid sounds as if she\u2019s speaking from space \u2014 with a blanket muffling random words. I know I miss key phrases and must constantly ask her to repeat herself. I can\u2019t read her body language. She can\u2019t read mine. And the human connection that allows a journalist to gain an understanding of a person\u2019s background and outlook is impossible. It\u2019s a deeply frustrating experience for both of us. Worse, I imagine, are Madrid\u2019s calls with Jimena.<\/p>\n<p>Madrid says she\u2019s been an emotional wreck since the moment her daughter was taken away from her. Her agony only increases as days pass without answers about if and when she and Jimena will be reunited, or even updates on how her daughter is doing. Is she eating well? How\u2019s she sleeping? She hasn\u2019t slept alone her entire life. She\u2019s always slept in a bed with her mother or grandmother.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn six years, I had only been away from her for two nights,\u201d Madrid said. \u201cAnd each time, she made me promise never to be away from her again. She hated it. We are incredibly close.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Would she have made the trip if she had known she\u2019d be separated from her daughter? \u201cNo,\u201d she said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have come.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Madrid said staying in El Salvador wasn\u2019t an option either. In an affidavit that is part of her asylum petition, she wrote that earlier this year a Salvadoran gang leader shot and killed her boyfriend while she was walking hand-in-hand with him. The gang member threatened to kill Madrid too unless she kept quiet, she said. She said she reported the murder to police anyway, but the gang member was never arrested.<\/p>\n<p>The affidavit said that Madrid observed police officers and the gang members \u201ctalking and hanging out like old friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Weeks after the murder, Madrid said, the gang member responsible approached her and Jimena in a market. She said he threatened to kidnap her daughter if he ever saw them again.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t leave the house after that,\u201d Madrid said. \u201cWhen a gang member says something like that, they are not playing around. We were terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Madrid decided to take Jimena to the United States, where Madrid has two sisters, and Jimena has four beloved cousins. On their first try in April, they made it all the way to northern Mexico, where there is rampant cartel violence. She and Jimena were intercepted by Mexican authorities and deported back to El Salvador. They set out again in May and rafted across the Rio Grande into Texas in mid-June.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a long, hard trip,\u201d Madrid said. \u201cBut Jimena behaved really well. All her cousins are in the United States. She was really happy about coming to live with them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Madrid said they had no idea they were walking into zero tolerance. One of her sisters had immigrated to the United States a couple of years ago, also fleeing gang violence. That sister was only separated from her daughter for a few hours, while she pleaded her case in court. And then mother and daughter were released on bond. Madrid told her attorney, Thelma O. Garcia, that she thought that\u2019s what was happening when a Border Patrol agent took Jimena away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJimena was screaming for her mother,\u201d Garcia said Madrid told her. \u201cWhen Cindy asked what was happening, the agent told her not to worry. He was only taking Jimena while Cindy went to court. They would only be separated a few hours. Now we know that was a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Garcia said that authorities have begun reviewing Madrid\u2019s asylum claim to determine whether her fears of persecution are credible. The attorney said that when she first met with Madrid, it was hard getting her to focus on the incidents that drove her to flee El Salvador. \u201cHer only concern was her daughter, and what needed to do be done to reunite them as quickly as possible,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cThe rest didn\u2019t seem to matter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Weakening Madrid\u2019s case further, Garcia says, is that her and Jimena\u2019s asylum claims are moving along on separate tracks before separate judges who will decide whether their claims merit a full hearing. Madrid has heard about numerous other parents whose claims have been denied and who have been deported without their children. She\u2019s worried the same could happen to her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t want to leave without my daughter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>While their claims are under review, however, Madrid wants her daughter released from the shelter into her sister\u2019s care in Houston. Her attorney said authorities are reviewing the request, but have not indicated when that might happen.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, Madrid takes comfort from the dozens of other mothers in the same situation in the Port Isabel Detention Center. There are 75 women in her barracks, she said. And she\u2019s grown close to some of them. They trade advice they\u2019ve gotten from their lawyers to prepare for the so-called \u201ccredible fear\u201d interviews that are part of asylum cases. They share cakes and fruit that come in occasional care packages. And they talk about their phone calls with their children. \u201cAt night you can hear many of us crying ourselves to sleep,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Madrid says she tries not to cry when she speaks with Jimena. And she\u2019s come up with a trick to keep Jimena from crying, too: coloring books. Madrid said she told Jimena she\u2019s begun coloring pictures that she\u2019ll either send to her daughter in the mail, or hold onto until they see one another. She asked Jimena to do the same. On the phone, they talk about their latest works of art.<\/p>\n<p>Madrid says she\u2019s working on a picture of a doll with brown skin. She\u2019s wearing a pink dress with yellow trim, and a crown of orange flowers. Jimena is coloring a picture of two bears embracing one another, surrounded by a heart.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt makes her happy to feel we\u2019re working on a project together,\u201d Madrid said of her daughter. \u201cIt keeps us connected, for now.\u201d<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.propublica.org\/pixel.js\" async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jimena Madrid riveted people around the world when her voice was captured on an audiotape. Three weeks later, reunification with her mother remains uncertain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":594462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140,234],"class_list":["post-600840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration","tag-children"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}