Families separated at Mexico border build new American life
She fled the Central American nation with her family and a price on her head to seek asylum at the
Keldy missed celebrating birthdays and holidays together. She watched from afar as her teenagers filled out and grew facial hair.
“There were times I thought I would never see them again,” she said.
Three years later, America has jettisoned many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Keldy was one of four parents who returned to
Keldy counts her blessings to be together as a family, free from death threats in
Yet now they face new difficulties. Keldy’s son, Mino, dropped out of school to help pay the rent on the house that six of them sharem where Keldy sleeps on the living room sofa. She wants to get a job, but is caring for her 7-year-old autistic niece and an unsteady 75-year-old mother, along with cooking and cleaning for the family. She sees drug use on the streets of the
“I hear gunshots sometimes. With my sister, when we run a quick errand, I look around to see whether someone was killed,” Keldy said. “La Ceiba, where I grew up, was like that."
She and her family lived on the north
Keldy described herself as middle-class housewife. She would cook for the tourists on the expeditions.
Drug trafficking gangs controlled some areas and required payments from businesses and people for protection. For those who didn’t pay, the penalty was death.
Hit men killed one of her brothers in 2006, she said. He was a bus driver.
“He had no money. The owner of the bus was the one who was supposed to pay, not him. He was just the bus driver. But they killed him,” she said.
In 2011, her family and other families decided to try to buy some parcels of land to live on and grow crops. Gangs, however, did not agree with the purchase and threatened one her brothers, then killed him after he reported the threats to authorities. He was one of four siblings killed by gangs.
Keldy testified in open court against the killers. She received numerous threats and was told there was a price on her head.
The whole family fled to
Back in
She crossed the border with her youngest son Erick, now 17, and her middle child Mino, now 19, in the fall of 2017.
The family planned to apply for asylum, so Keldy flagged down a
But unknown to them,
Less than two days after the family had arrived in the
“I felt helpless, like there was nothing I could do. And then I blamed myself because I brought my kids to uncertainty, into a situation in which they were taken from me, they were taken from my arms and I couldn’t do anything,” she said.
The kids were frightened to be separated from their mother.
"We started crying, my brother and I, because we were left alone in there. And it was very cold. They only gave us a small blanket,” recalled Erick, who was 13 then. His brother Mino was 15.
The boys were moved to a shelter for minors.
Mino, who wears glasses and smiles often, said he did not want to do anything at the time, just cry. He felt lost at the shelter, with the other unaccompanied minors.
“They did not feel what I was going through because they had come alone. They did not come with their mother. They did not feel the pain I felt when I was separated from her,” he said.
The children were both soon released, and family members paid for their flight to
But Keldy was not released. She was kept in an
She immediately traveled back north and settled in
In
“He felt alone,” Keldy said. “I wasn’t there”.
Online learning during the pandemic was a problem for both boys, who say they no longer understand classes. Mino dropped out in December. They say they can read English but they don’t speak it.
In
Known to others as “la pastora”, she delivered sermons and benedictions to other migrants and at migrant shelters, listening to others who were in pain, like her.
“I would tell others in my prayers to believe, to never doubt, answers were going to come to our lives,” she said.
The answer she’d been waiting for arrived last month.
Corchado had been trying obtain a humanitarian parole for Keldy, and finally found success.
“I realized then these were the final steps the attorney was doing to get me in,” she said. “Later she told me I would probably enter on
It was.
She entered on
The Honduran mother took a plane to
“They ended up being ‘I love you’. Those are the words I wanted to tell my kids, that I loved them,” she said.
A video shows the family reunion on
They are together, yet life still isn’t easy.
Since her arrival, the Honduran mother has been inside the home, cleaning and cooking. When she speaks there is relief but also anxiety in her voice. She said she wonders about the sturdiness of the house, with stairs that feel unstable.
She doesn’t venture out much. Opioid use has taken root in
She misses small-town life south of the border; the close buildings of
Keldy is thinking about finding a job, but she worries about leaving her mother, who forgot she was cooking the other day until there was fire in the stove. Keldy burned her hand putting it out leaving marks on her skin.
“I don’t know what I am going to do. I would like to work but who is going to take care of my mother and Dana?” she said of the niece who she adopted as a baby.
Keldy’s husband crossed the border five years ago. He lives in
Las
Corchado, the attorney, said Keldy has been granted humanitarian parole for three years but she hopes the
“We don’t just want the door open for Keldy. We want her to be successful in the United States,” Corchado said. “She shouldn’t be sleeping on a couch after all the horrible experiences she went through."
But for Keldy, it’s enough, now, to be with her children. She knows that is more than many of her fellow migrants have.
“Everyday I pray to God for other mothers to be able to come in. They cry for their kids”, she said. “They ask me ‘do you know anything new?’ and I tell them to have patience. And I tell them they will succeed.”
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