Asylum-seeker says son still has nightmares from their separation last year, cries ‘Let me go’

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It’s approaching a year since 8-year-old Byron was kidnapped by the Trump administration, and, under court order, returned to his mom, Maria Gloria. Yet, he’s no closer to being the child he used to be. “The little boy wakes up crying,” she told NBC News, “sometimes saying things like ‘let me go’ in his sleep.” Byron and his older brother, 11-year-old Franklin, were separated from their mom for nearly two months.

The asylum-seekers represent just one family from the thousands that were ripped apart at the southern border under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. Following a June court decision ordering reunifications, Maria Gloria traveled to New York to reunite with her boys. From there, they traveled upstate to Kingston to start new lives. With the help of Catholic Charities, Maria was connected with English classes, a food pantry, even sports activities for the boys. 

Their freedom hasn’t meant freedom from trauma, though. There’s been much focus on the trauma that separation and deportation inflicts on children, but parents are also affected. “Even after their reunion in July,” NBC News continued, “Maria Gloria fell into a deep depression, barely slept and lost a significant amount of weight because of the separation, she said.” 

Coupled with watching an asylum claim play out under an administration that also sneers at them, Maria Gloria is constantly worried. “I was spending so many days so sad, crying, when my children would ask me things all I could do was cry,” she said. Like many other asylum-seekers, she fled her home country of Honduras after she got death threats. Those threats still haunt Byron. “’[He] has dreamed many times’ that those threatening their lives in Honduras ‘have killed me,’ she said.”

The same judge who ordered their reunification also appeared to scoff at the Trump administration’s claim that it could take up to two years to identify the unknown number of other families that were separated before the official implementation of the policy, though he also did not set a timeline. The American Civil Liberties Union has said the U.S. has the resources and capability to do this in three months, and the group is right. These kids can’t wait. Family separation remains a crisis.

from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2Dk4ETR