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“G.A.” should have spent his seventh birthday surrounded by his excited friends, but instead he spent it in U.S. custody, a young victim of the Trump administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. His mom Victoria was in a separate facility thousands of miles away. “She spent the day crying and thinking that her little boy was somewhere turning seven, all by himself,” a court filing states. They would not be reunited for another two and a half months. The asylum-seeker is now one of the families seeking millions in damages.
Victoria recounts a traumatic journey from the moment she and her son were detained at the southern border in California last May, saying that border officers would only allow her and other detained mothers to see their children at night. Then one day an officer took them away completely. “Don’t cry today, today is a happy day,” he taunted. “It’s Mother’s Day.” Victoria witnessed one mom having her child physically ripped from her arms. Then G.A. was taken “without any words of comfort and without the slightest show of compassion.”
Victoria would then spend weeks without any information about G.A., until she was allowed to talk to him on the phone in late June. The moment he heard her voice, the filing states, he began to cry. “The social worker said that G.A. was not eating and would not get out of bed. He spent all his time crying.” A second call a week later went no better. They would not be reunited for another month, in Texas. They were eventually released after Victoria passed her initial asylum interview, but not before spending months more in a family jail.
Victoria said both she and her son are taking medication to deal with the emotional distress from their separation, but she’s particularly worried about him. When they were still at the family jail in Texas, he twice told her “that she was not his mother anymore because she allowed him to be taken away from her.” He’s angrier than ever and still blames her for their separation. Trying to get him to school is an ordeal. “Victoria continues to be concerned about her son’s well-being, and worries that their relationship may never recover.”
Wednesday, Feb. 20, marks 209 days since a federal judge’s reunification deadline, but children stolen from families at the border are still in U.S. custody. Family separation remains a crisis.