{"id":602243,"date":"2018-07-11T08:51:04","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T14:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=602243"},"modified":"2018-07-12T11:13:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T17:13:50","slug":"a-very-cruel-punishment-a-family-split-by-zero-tolerance-wont-try-to-cross-again-mom-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/07\/a-very-cruel-punishment-a-family-split-by-zero-tolerance-wont-try-to-cross-again-mom-says\/","title":{"rendered":"‘A very cruel punishment:’ A family split by ‘zero tolerance’ won\u2019t try to cross again, mom says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heyli\"

Six-year-old Heyli was separated from her father after crossing the U.S. border in late May. Her mother and aunt, who have spoken to her by phone, say she cries constantly and begs them to take her away from the Arizona facility where she is being held. “There’s nothing else I can say to say to make her stop crying,” Heyli’s mother said.<\/p><\/div>\n

Every time 6-year-old Heyli gets on the phone with her mother back in Honduras, she breaks into tears.<\/p>\n

The last time was Tuesday of last week.<\/p>\n

She had been dreaming that she was back in San Francisco de la Paz, their village in rural Olancho state. Gone were Miriam and Jose, Heyli\u2019s minders at the Arizona shelter where she\u2019s been staying for weeks. There were no arts and crafts classes to attend. No more doctors\u2019 visits. No other young Central Americans wondering when they\u2019d see their parents again.<\/p>\n

Heyli was at home with her mother and father \u2014 Mami and Papi \u2014 as if she had never crossed the U.S. border, as if she had never been separated from her dad, as if she had never fallen into the crosshairs of the Trump administration\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d policy.<\/p>\n

Then she woke up \u2014 in her room at a Southwest Key shelter for migrant children \u2014 and began sobbing, she told her mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had all been a dream, and so then she cried a lot, and they called me from [the shelter] because the girl was crying during the night,\u201d her mother, Claudia, said on a video call from Honduras. \u201cSo I talked to her and said, \u2018What is happening to you?\u2019 and she said, \u2018Mami, I feel sad and I don’t want to be here anymore, I want to go back with you there in Honduras. I want to go home.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Heyli's

Heyli’s bedroom in San Francisco de la Paz, Honduras. Heyli, a first-grader, is learning to read and write, and her mother said she was excited for the trip to the U.S. “My daughter left happy,” said Heyli’s mother. “She likes to travel a lot.”<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a limbo hundreds of migrant children are trapped in as they wait in shelters across the United States to be reunited with family members they were separated from after crossing the southern border. Though the government is now under a court order to quickly put separated families back together by July 26, their efforts are hampered by bureaucratic disarray and distance. Some parents, like Heyli\u2019s father, are on the brink of being deported or have already been repatriated to violence-torn countries without their children.<\/p>\n

The government says it has reunited hundreds of the more than 2,300 children split from their parents or guardians since May, when the Trump administration launched a crackdown on people who crossed the border illegally. Though vans appeared poised<\/a> to return some migrant toddlers to their parents Tuesday morning, the government said Monday<\/a> it would not be able to meet a judge’s deadline to reunite all children under 5 with their families by Tuesday, and no one can say for sure when and how older kids, like Heyli, can rejoin their parents.<\/p>\n

Heyli\u2019s plight drew attention last month when her father told The Texas Tribune<\/a>, from a detention center north of Houston, that after being nudged by federal officials, he agreed to sign voluntary deportation paperwork out of desperation to see his daughter again.<\/p>\n