Migrant mother who sued Trump Administration did not see son for 9 months

ABC-7 has learned one of the migrant plaintiffs in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against the Trump Administration is a mother who has been staying at Annunciation House for several months.

The Brazilian woman, only identified as Jocelyn, was reunited with her son several weeks ago in El Paso. The mother is seeking asylum in the US because she fears her former husband will harm her and her son if they return to Brazil.

The mother told reporters she spent seven months in jail after she was separated from her son by immigration authorities in August 2017. “It was an injustice,” she said, “After I was released from jail, it took (immigration authorities) about two months to reunite me with my son.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Associated Press contributed to this article.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw issued an injunction Tuesday that gives the Trump Administration and immigration authorities 30 days to reunite all children forcibly separated from their parent under the “zero-tolerance” policy.

Sabraw, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, said children under 5 must reunited with their parents within 14 days. He also issued a nationwide injunction against further family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or doesn’t want to be with the child, and ordered the government to provide phone contact between parents and their children within 10 days.

Jocelyn remembers people she was jailed with who are still separated from their children. “We need support from everyone because these separations have been very hard on immigrant families,” she said.

When reunited with her son, Jocelyn noticed he seemed confused and did not appear to believe he was free. The boy was administered medication without her permission while he was in custody, she said. Jocelyn believes her son was given medication as a result of the trauma he suffered during their separation. “In Brazil, we never gave him these medications,” she said.

The boy spent more than nine months in a migrant facility near Chicago. Jocelyn’s son is a lot calmer now and feels good about enrolling in school very soon, his mother said.

Attorneys representing Jocelyn said that while in custody, migrant parents like their client do not have the parental rights they should have over their children/

Further, the woman’s attorneys said Jocelyn’s arrest and separation is evidence the Trump Administration began separating families in El Paso even before it implemented its “zero tolerance” policy nationwide.

Now, the attorneys are focused on helping those still in ICE custody learn more about whereabouts of their children. “What about the women who are still in ICE detention? Is it realistic that in the time frame they were given, these families will be reunited? What about the parents who were deported without their children,” an attorney said, “We need to hold ICE accountable … We are planning on using this legal opinion immediately.”

The attorney urged El Pasoans and immigrant advocates to remain vigilant. “Don’t look away. This was happening in El Paso before it made national headlines and people did not believe that it was happening. Let’s not look away,” the attorney said.

Sabraw’s deadline was set Tuesday night in San Diego after President Donald Trump’s order ending his policy of separating families gave way to days of uncertainty, conflicting information and no word from the administration on when parents might see their children again. “This situation has reached a crisis level,” Sabraw wrote.

The ruling poses a host of logistical problems for the administration, and it was unclear how it would meet the deadline. The Justice Department said the ruling makes it “even more imperative that Congress finally act to give federal law enforcement the ability to simultaneously enforce the law and keep families together.”

The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in March on behalf of Jocelyn and a 7-year-old girl separated from her Congolese mother.

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters – hundreds of miles away, in some cases – under a “zero tolerance” policy toward families caught illegally entering the U.S. Many are from drug- and violence-wracked Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Amid an international outcry, Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families and said parents and children will instead be detained together. But parents already separated from their children were left in the dark on when and how they would be reunited, and Homeland Security seemed only to sow more confusion over the weekend.