Tears flooded when a mother and daughter reunited at the Miami-Dade airport Sunday night. The 7-year-old girl had been apart from her family, alone at an immigration detention center for nearly 2 months. Martin-Godinez embraced her daughter for the first time in 61 days since leaving her home of Guatemala. The mother and son claimed asylum May 1st and has been living with her family in Miami since she crossed the border. Furthermore, the husband and daughter had planned to join the rest of the family once her school year finished.
Escaping the threat of violence at home was the sole reason for coming to America. The family had a great salary, but with that came the demands from gangs in the area. The mother states, “We were threatened by people, that if we didn’t pay them they were going to kill us, or our kids.”
Her husband crossed with their daughter unaware that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had announced that all adults crossing the border illegally would be charge with a federal crime due to Trumps zero tolerance policy. This forced parent’s to be separated from their children, which caused the father to be detained in Atlanta while the daughter had been taken to Michigan.
Martin-Godinez’s message to other families are that if they are thinking about claiming asylum here to find another country in stating, “The laws here are harsh. and people don’t have hearts.”
