Push to Reunite Children Taken From Mother Begins for One Immigration Attorney
Jose Xavier Orochena is still frustrated but he appears to be making progress. Last week, the immigration lawyer told WNYC about his trouble connecting with three siblings staying in foster care in New York City. He couldn't meet them or even call them at the foster agency, Cayuga Centers. The New York attorney is also representing their mother, Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia, a Guatemalan national who was detained after illegally crossing the border more than a month ago.
On Monday, Orochena told WNYC he expected the Cayuga Centers would allow him to see the children soon. He also spoke to Gonzalez-Garcia for the first time on Saturday. She is at the Eloy detention center in Arizona while she pursues an asylum claim in immigration court.
Orochena gave WNYC part of an emotional recording of his phone call with Gonzalez-Garcia. She sounded like she was crying as he asked her about a call she had the night before with her children. She said it was only the second call she's had with them in the month since they were separated.
"I talked to my son," she told Orochena, in Spanish. "He said mommy, we’re here. We’re OK, don’t worry."
When Orochena asked how the children are being treated, Gonzalez-Garcia answered, "They are desperate. They want to be with me. My youngest daughter calls and says 'mommy, I want to be with you, I don’t want to be here anymore.'"
She then told her lawyer, "I can’t take much more of this" and described how she's met many other mothers in detention who are desperate to reconnect with their children. But she said her children are physically fine and staying together with the same foster family.
It's still unclear how the Trump administration will reunite more than 2000 children who were separated from their parents because of its new "zero tolerance" policy at the border. The President reversed the policy last week and said parents and children will be detained together, though that could violate a court order. In another reversal on Monday afternoon, Kevin K. McAleenan, Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said his agency has stopped referring immigrant parents for criminal prosecution.
Gonzalez-Garcia has a hearing in an Arizona immigration court on Friday. Orochena said he hopes the judge will allow her to pay a reasonable bond in order to be released while her asylum case drags on. Then, she can come to New York to be reunited with her children. He wants to meet with Cayuga Centers before then to learn what documentation Gonzalez-Garcia needs to retrieve her children.
Cayuga Centers did not respond to messages left by WNYC.
If Gonzalez-Garcia is not bonded out and remains in detention, her children will stay in foster care until they're released to a relative. An aunt in North Carolina has offered to take them. Orochena said this same relative contacted him last month after learning through Cayuga Centers that the siblings were in New York.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said there are approximately 300 children who were taken from the border and are now staying with New York City foster agencies. Those agencies are responsible for connecting the children with their detained parents. Most of the children do not have private lawyers. Catholic Charities of New York has a federal contract to provide them all with legal services.
Mario Russell, the agency's director of immigrant and refugee services, said Catholic Charities has screened all of these children and has enough attorneys for now because most of the children do not yet have immigration court hearings scheduled. But he's arranged for a conference call on Tuesday with local pro bono immigration lawyers who want to help. He said they'll be needed if the children's cases all start moving to court very quickly or their cases turn out to be more complicated.
Catholic Charities' contract is to represent unaccompanied minors in foster care in New York City. In the past, those were older teens who came to the border alone fleeing persecution or violence and Russell said very few needed foster care because they were usually released to relatives in the U.S. But he called the current situation "unprecedented" because there are now 300 younger children, mostly under the age of 12, in federal foster care in New York City.
Nonetheless, he predicted these children won't need lawyers right away.
"They are not going to be articulating a reason for asylum or other remedy under the immigration law," he explained. "Most of them are expressing a desire to be reconnected with their moms or their dads." And because many of those parents are being deported, the children will be sent to join them.
Orochena believes extra lawyers could at least help advocate for the children, given the lack of clarity around reunification.
"Who is Cayuga, who is Catholic Charities to put roadblocks in front of a family that says I want my own lawyer?" he said, referring to the fact that the three siblings he's representing have been in foster care for a month and he still hasn't seen or spoken to them. "I find that troubling."
Updated 6/27: Due to an editing error, Yeni Gonzalez-Garcia’s name was mistakenly reported as Yeni Rodriguez in this on-air segment and in an earlier version of this web article. Her full name on the legal documents used by her lawyer is Yeni Maricela Gonzalez-Garcia de Garcia.
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