Mom Separated From Kids At U.S. Border Heads to New York to Reunite With Them

A Guatemalan mother who was separated from her three young children at the U.S. border has been released after more than a month in a detention center in Arizona and is on her way to New York to reunite with her kids.

WNYC's Beth Fertig was with Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia and her attorney and in Arizona Thursday when she was released from the Eloy Detention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

"She was crying a lot.. she kept talking about her children, how she hasn't seen them in 43 days, she had a few of their belongings she was clinging to in a knapsack," Fertig told WNYC's All Things Considered host Jami Floyd.

Gonzalez-Garcia's lawyer Jose Xavier Orochena was able to broker a deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, securing her release from detention in exchange for a $7,500 bond. WNYC listeners heard about Gonzalez-Garcia's story last week and swiftly raised the funds to pay for her bond. Volunteers have coordinated a series of rides to get her to New York, where her children are being cared for at the foster care provider Cayuga Centers in East Harlem.

The first volunteer, Janey Pearl Starks, will drive her from Phoenix to New Mexico.