In 2018, Mirsy Alva López arrived at the US–Mexico border with her then-3-year-old son, Ederson. They had left Guatemala and traveled for two weeks, day and night. But the arduous journey wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part was when border agents ripped Ederson from Mirsy’s arm and took him away.
They had just become one of thousands of parents and children who would be separated under the first Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which the ACLU challenged as unlawful in a high-profile case known as Ms. L v. ICE.
For four and a half months, Mirsy was detained in Arizona without knowing that Ederson was in a government shelter just an hour away. She had no news of him until a court order to reunify families brought them back together. But that reunification was bittersweet. Ederson didn’t recognize Mirsy at first and he asked her, “Why did you leave me?” Ederson continued to struggle even after they were reunited. He became hypervigilant and resisted going to school.
To try to repair some of the damage, the Biden administration reached a settlement with the ACLU that offered some relief to separated families, including a path to temporary legal status. But in President Donald Trump’s second term, that commitment has been ignored and families like Mirsy’s are being detained and deported, often despite having protections under the settlement.
“We never went far enough to repair the original sin of the separations at the border,” Mirsy’s lawyer told me. “And now we’re perpetrating that same harm all over again.”
To learn more about how the Trump administration is violating the landmark settlement for separated families, and one family’s yearslong saga to stay together, read my full piece here.
—Isabela Dias
