Once Separated From Her Mom, Now Studying To Help Other Immigrant Kids

This is the third story in an ongoing series following Giddel Contreras, one of more than 400,000 immigrants whose Temporary Protected Status could expire in the coming year. Read and listen to the first story, "A Family Braces for Dad's Deportation," here, and the second, "Climbing the American Ladder as Deportation Looms," here.

Dany Manzanares Gomez, 25, was at work last year, watching the news, when she first heard the recording of children crying for their parents after U.S. officials forcibly separated them at the southern border.

"And I'm like: 'I need to be one of the people to be advocating for kids that are going through this because I can't take this anymore, it's not OK,'" she said. "I know that in the future I'm going to be able to have a position where I can do something about it — and I can be one of those people that are going to be protecting these kids, and protecting our kids."

Gomez is a full-time nanny in Upper Manhattan and a student at City College of New York, studying to become an art therapist or horticultural therapist in order to work with immigrant children affected by the separation of families. She wants to do that work because she lived that very experience. Nearly 20 years ago, when she was 6, Gomez's mother left their town in Honduras, which was controlled by gangs, and fled to the U.S.

"I had no idea what the hell was happening," Gomez said. "I just remember that my mom was gonna leave but I didn't know that she was not gonna come back."

Gomez barely knew her father; she was raised by her grandmother and dropped out of school in the third grade to run the family's bodega. Mom and daughter spoke just once a month by phone for the next five years. At 10, Gomez crossed the U.S.-Mexican border with an aunt, nearly drowning in the Rio Grande, to reunite with her mother.

"I always think about the things that I went through and that time that I was away from my mom and I'm like, it's incredible that a human being can be exposed to that type of environment and still survive," she said. "And that's why I've been deciding to go on the career path that I'm like going through."

Family separation defines today's immigration experiences: Parents leaving their children to migrate to the U.S. for safety and economic opportunity. Federal immigration agents detaining and deporting immigrants who overstay their visas, regardless of whether they're parents raising young children. And thousands of children split from their parents at the southern border during the first two years of the Trump Administration.  

Removing immigrant kids from their families exacerbates the experience of fleeing home countries, according to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and exposes children to "trauma and toxic stress that can have lifelong negative impacts on their mental and physical health." Children who have a parent detained and deported suffer from eating and sleeping problems along with speech and developmental difficulties.

Gomez's memories of her childhood journey north come out in colors, like the red bracelet she wore the day she left, the red SUV that she and her aunt squeezed into for the first leg of the journey, the white hotel in Mexico they stayed at with other migrants toward the end.

Carrying a backpack with "a bunch of things that I thought that my mom was gonna be happy to see me wearing," Gomez traveled by boat and bus. "It sounds very 'Dora The Explorer,'" she said.

At one point, she ate horse meat. At another, she slept on a mattress full of cockroaches that "would pop like fireworks" when she stepped on them. And finally, burly men with face tattoos accompanied Gomez and her group across the Rio Grande into Texas. She almost slipped off of the inner tube that she was hanging on, but one of the men "grabbed my arm and practically dragged me through the river."

Gomez was not yet 11 years old. She and her aunt turned themselves into border agents. They were released, and they boarded a bus to Illinois, where Gomez didn't recognize the woman waiting for her.

"Once I got off the bus she hugged me, like 'I missed you so much,' and I was like, 'Oh, this is my mom,'" Gomez remembered. "And I didn't let go of her for the whole night. I was just holding her and touching her and just hugging her."

Gomez's mother had been working three jobs in New York to save what it cost to bring Gomez and her aunt across the border. Once settled in New York, Gomez went to school, learned English and graduated high school.

In college, she took some psychology classes that helped her to understand the trauma of those years of separation from her mom. She now attributes a difficulty trusting others and making connections with new people to her experiences as a child. "That's what happened to my brain when I was there...that's why I have those memories locked, blocked and put away," she said.

Like many Central American immigrant families, Gomez's is one of mixed legal status. Her mother is undocumented, and after nearly two decades in the country she remains fearful enough of deportation that she didn't want to reveal her name. Gomez's sister was born in the U.S., and is therefore a citizen. Gomez's uncle, Giddel Contreras, is a chef at the upscale Pierre Hotel on Central Park but he stands to be deported in January if the courts uphold Trump's plan to end Temporary Protected Status. His 12-year-old daughter, Madison — Gomez's cousin — is a U.S. citizen who would be separated from her father if he's deported. So family separation continues to haunt this family.

"She's not just an average kid anymore," Gomez said of Madison. "She's also worrying about her father you know being deported, her father not being in her life anymore." But Gomez knows enough, as someone who lived that experience, not to pry. "I'll just like tell her: 'Hey, if you need to talk, I'm here. And remember that we're gonna be here for you no matter what.'"

Meanwhile, Gomez's own immigration status is in a precarious place. Gomez is a "Dreamer" — a recipient of the President Obama program known as DACA, which allows her to live and work in the country. But Trump is fighting in court to end that program, too, and it could mean Gomez would be deported. 

For years, Gomez didn't speak to her mother about the separation, or the trauma she experienced. But recently Gomez has been going to therapy, enabling deeper explorations. "I've been telling her a lot in the last conversations: 'You're very admirable and I really look up to you because you're such a strong person, and I can't believe that you've been able to raise me by yourself,'" she said.

Asked about her time apart from her daughter, her mother said: "It was so hard for me, very depressing. Oh, that makes me want to cry. I do not want to remember those days."

But Gomez wants to remember. It gives her the energy she needs to work with immigrant kids.

"I just need to be one more person out there in the world helping people that have gone through similar things."