Split up at the U.S.-Mexico border, family finally reunites

The trio had crossed into the United States in search of asylum. Once apprehended, Hernandez said, she was given an impossible choice: Leave the country, either with the girls or without them. Rattled by recent threats to Michelle from Honduran gangs, Hernandez decided the girls would be safer in the United States, she said.

The sisters were sent to a children's shelter in California and eventually released to live with their brother Maynor, now 34, who earns a living selling oranges in Los Angeles. Hernandez was deported, one of thousands of parents separated from their children under then-President Donald Trump's controversial "zero tolerance" policy to deter illegal immigration. Reuters, which has followed the family since 2020, is referring to the girls by their middle names to protect their privacy.

Over the years, Hernandez tried to bridge the 2,800 mile (4,500 km) gap between them with near daily video calls, studying their faces on a smartphone screen and listening to their stories. Nicole reported losing a tooth; Michelle confessed her crushes.

On her first night in the United States, Hernandez shared a bed with her daughters, gazing at them as they slept and marveling at how much they had grown.

"So many years without seeing them," she said to Reuters this month, her voice shaky from crying. "They are so big now."

As of Jan. 25, the Biden task force had reunited 126 kids with their parents or legal guardians. About 377 more - from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, and Venezuela - have reunifications in progress, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Setting up a process to bring back parents who were deported to countries across Latin America took months, in part because of the Trump administration's incomplete and shoddy record-keeping, the task force said. A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

To aid the task force, the Biden administration created the websites Together.gov and Juntos.gov, where families can register for reunification.

The administration is “dedicated to finding every family and ensuring families have long-term stability in the United States," said Michelle Brane, the head of the task force in a statement.

Still, some families have been left frustrated, even distraught, at the slow pace of reunifications, according to migrant advocates.

"We are talking about people who haven't seen their kids in three or four years," said Hernandez's lawyer Carol Anne Donohoe, who manages the Family Reunification Project at the non-profit immigrant advocacy group based at the U.S.-Mexico border Al Otro Lado.

”Why are you making them jump through these hoops?," she said. "Any question you ask these parents is extremely traumatizing, because they are panicking and thinking 'Oh no, I am not going to get back.'"

TIPS FROM TAXI DRIVERS

It fell to Honduran attorney Dora Melara to search for Hernandez.

Melara was enlisted in early 2020 by the New York-based advocacy organization Justice in Motion, as part of the lawsuit against the U.S. government brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Melara had only an incomplete name and location for Hernandez from a U.S. government list of parents and guardians who had been separated from their children at the border. She had no contact information for Hernandez's daughters.

The Honduran lawyer took three trips over weeks to a gang-ridden town in northern Honduras near the city of San Pedro Sula. She traveled only during the day to be safe.

Thanks in part to tips from local taxi drivers, she found Hernandez in March 2020. By the time she showed up on Hernandez's doorstep, manila folder in hand, the Honduran mother was so desperate to see her daughters that she was contemplating another attempt at crossing the border, this time with a migrant caravan.

When Hernandez found out she could apply to rejoin her girls after Biden took office, she was overjoyed. But what followed was months of delay.

"I gave all the information I could, but then time just passed and I didn't get any messages. I felt like I was never going to see my daughters again," Hernandez said.

Complicating her case was her petition to travel with her now 4-year-old grandson, Aron, who was in her care and would need his own passport and other permissions to leave Honduras.

By October 2021, she had filed applications for "humanitarian parole" for herself and her grandson to enter the United States, her lawyers said. Approval came weeks later, in December. Then Aron came down with dengue fever, pushing back their travel date past Christmas.

Finally, in early January, Hernandez was told to pack her bags, take a COVID-19 test and head for the local airport with Aron.

A NEW START

After the two travellers landed in Los Angeles, the family made their way to Maynor's one-bedroom apartment. The girls stayed out of school the next day to help their mom with the mundane tasks of building a new life in the United States: getting a cell phone, enrolling Aron in school, looking for a bigger place to live.

Under humanitarian parole in the United States, Hernandez is entitled to a work permit and is protected from deportation for three years, but she has no clear path to a permanent legal status.

The Biden administration recently pulled out of settlement talks with hundreds of families who had sued the government seeking compensation for costs and suffering allegedly caused by separations. Some Republican lawmakers raised an outcry over the potential for high payouts.

In 2019, however, a federal judge ruled that separated families are entitled to some mental health services at no cost.

A November 2021 study by the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights found that parents and children forcibly separated at the border endured severe psychological trauma, including confusion and panic, depression, frequent crying and nightmares.Symptoms can linger even after reunification, the clinicians found.

For Michelle, it has been hard to talk to others about what she's gone through.