A Guatemalan asylum-seeker who was separated from his son for over a year is believed to be the first parent affected by the barbaric zero tolerance policy to win his case and be permanently protected from deportation, Texas Monthly reports. Juan and his son, 6-year-old Edwin, “also have the distinction of being separated longer than almost any other family—378 days.”
They arrived at the southern border on May 1, 2018, after violent gang threats against Juan forced him and Edwin to flee their home. Juan had been working for a bus company “that was regularly extorted by a criminal gang and corrupt local police.” They then demanded Juan kill the company bosses—or himself be killed. Left with no choice, Juan and Edwin fled for the U.S.
But instead of finding safety here, they were ripped apart by federal immigration officials. Edwin was sent to one facility, and Juan to another. They would be separated so long that Juan says Edwin forgot how to speak their Mayan dialect. Just as bad, Edwin stopped calling him dad during their weekly phone calls.
“’[Edwin] wouldn’t say ‘papa ‘on the phone with me,’ Juan said. Worse, he’d started calling adults at the shelter ‘abuelo' and ‘abuela’—grandfather and grandmother. It was another marker of the toll that being ripped away, quite literally, from his father was taking on the child. ‘I believed I was going to lose my son,’ he said.”
When Edwin was able to speak to his mom on the phone, the extent of the damage was clear: “What are you saying, I don’t understand you. Speak to me in Spanish, I don’t understand you,” Juan says Edwin told her.
from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2JJUtgg
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