Editor’s note: The names of the people in this story have been changed. They are undocumented immigrants seeking asylum in the United States and agreed to talk to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity. The interviews were conducted with the help of an interpreter.
NEW ORLEANS – All around her, there was crime, destitution, hopelessness. Rosa couldn’t find work and couldn’t afford a home of her own.
At 31 years old, she was a single mother still living with her parents in Trujillo, a city along the northern coast of Honduras, where the murder rate is high and poverty is crippling.
Rosa worried about her parents and how they would continue to get by in Trujillo. But she worried mostly about her son, Juan. At age 14, he is just man enough for drug traffickers to try to snare him into their web.
She cried as she talked about her boy, an only child, who she described as tall and thin, and medium complected, like her. He loves soccer, she said, especially the Real Madrid team.
“I worried that they were going to make him sell drugs,” she said.
It was time to leave Honduras, she told Juan in early May, asking him whether he’d like to come to the United States. They would be among the latest wave of migrants coming to America dreaming of security and prosperity.
“He told me, 'yes, that it was OK,' and that he would come with me. … He said, ‘We’re going to see my aunt and I’m going to see my dad.’ ”
Rosa’s husband fled Honduras when Juan was 2, and is an undocumented worker in Texas now.
“Since that time, I haven’t see him again,” Rosa said. “And it’s been five years that we haven’t been in communication.”
About a dozen tents have been set up on the cement outside the entrance gate to the San Ysidro port providing some protection from cloudy skies and intermittent rain on May 1, 2018. The migrants are now hunkered down for the long haul. Volunteers from various organizations in Tijuana continue to drop off food, water, diapers, and clothing. (Photo: Nick Oza, The Arizona Republic)
A few months before Rosa and Juan set out on their journey, a caravan of asylum seekers from Central America set out for the U.S. via bus, the media attention that swirled around the caravan further ignited the explosive immigration debate in the U.S. In early May, President Donald Trump's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy resulted in the separation of immigrant parents and children at the border.
Not knowing about the separation of parents and children at the U.S. border, Rosa bought a pair of bus tickets.
Her plan was to take Juan to Louisiana, where her sister, Maria, and her friend Karla had already settled with their children. She hoped to find work, possibly as a hotel maid, and send money home to Honduras to help her parents.
10 days on the road
On May 5, Rosa and Juan boarded a bus with little more than a change of clothes, some perfume, and Juan’s cellphone.
The more than 2,500-mile bus ride would take them 10 days through Guatemala and Mexico to the land of plenty, a nation built on the backs of hardworking immigrants who sought a better life, just like her.
At first, she was scared.
“There was a time that I was,” afraid on the journey, she said, but as more people joined them in Guatemala, "I started to feel more comfortable. … The people with whom we traveled paid for our meals. And during the trip, my son’s father sent me $100 so I could buy food for my son.
“Everything was fine. We got off the bus to buy meals, went to the bathroom.”
She told another immigrant, Jose Garcia, 34, of Sinaloa, Mexico, that she spent $6,000 on the trip, paying at various checkpoints along the way to ensure their safety.
The bus stopped for the last time on May 15, just south of the Arizona border.
“We crossed a small river,” she said. “From there, we walked across a sandy highway and then we were really close to the Mexico/U.S. border."
A rickety wall made of wood was all that stood between Rosa and Juan, and freedom.
Rosa had no way of knowing as they crawled through a hole at the bottom of the wall that their struggle had only just begun.
Border patrol officers waited on the other side. They took Rosa and Juan to a detention center in Yuma, Arizona.
Officers took everything they brought with them from home. But the most precious thing they took away from Rosa was her son.
“When we got there, there was an official who asked us whether we knew that they were separating families from the children,” she said. “I said, ‘No.’ "
She and Juan soon found themselves in "a prison where the women and children were separated. When (Juan) was getting ready to go, the police arrived and they got me and told me they were taking him away. They let me say goodbye to him.
"The police were very good with me. They said, 'Don’t worry. Your son is going to be fine.' "
Juan tried to reassure Rosa, too, parroting the immigration officer, telling her he would be OK.
But in the days that followed, Rosa did worry, and not just for Juan. She said she was locked in a crowded cell with many other women when she developed a fever and began to vomit.
"I suffered," she said. "They only gave us instant soup, and for the kids they gave crackers and a little juice. … I was sick for five days. I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink water, nothing. I was pretty bad. That’s when I asked to see the doctor. But they wouldn’t take me.
"I told them how I was feeling, but they didn’t listen to me."
There were no beds, so Rosa laid on the floor. She said she wondered whether she might die there on the cold, hard, floor of that Arizona detention center.
Somehow, she recovered.
"Thanks to God," she said, "I am better."
Nine days after she arrived in America, Rosa was moved from Yuma to a detention center in Florence, Arizona, and then a day later to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver. She didn't know where Juan was; her fears and worries intensified.
There was, however, one saving grace: In Colorado, there was solid food, not just instant soup for the detainees. And there were beds, too.
As the days passed, Rosa had no way of knowing how long she'd be locked away or when or whether she would ever be reunited with her son.
Faith helped her through it.
"I ask (God) to help me and to give me strength to get my baby back, just like he helped me arrive here, Rosa said. "I know that I will be back with my son again."
Yet she had no way of knowing that outside the detention center, political will was bending as Trump was under increasing pressure to end his zero-tolerance immigration policy that separated her from Juan.
Tides turn, help shows up
Nicole Edralin, 15, left, comforts her sister Michelle Edralin, 12, both of Highland Park, N.J., as they protest outside the Supreme Court Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 26, 2018. Their father Cloyd is currently being detained by ICE. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) (Photo: Carolyn Kaster, AP)
By mid-June, outrage and sympathy continued to mount among the American public for families separated at the border. Headlines stretched across front pages, politicians took to Twitter and cable news channels to debate immigration policy and protests popped up around the country.
In an op-ed in the New York Times, a group of law firm CEOs wrote about their opposition to the policy, and pledged to help reunify families and represent detainees in their asylum cases.
One of the firms was Detroit-based Miller Canfield.
"I had been watching the news, just like everyone else, and I was feeling extremely helpless, and I felt that a wrong was being done to these families that were being separated, especially asylum seekers," said Tom Turner, a Miller Canfield attorney. "I have a special place in my heart for asylum seekers.
"When I was in law school, I did an internship with the United Nations and did a lot of work with refugees there. I have a lot of friends who practice in human rights," Turner said. "I have always felt strongly about refugee law and the importance of the United States accepting refugees and asylum seekers."
The pro-bono arm of the law firm asked Turner to represent Rosa in her asylum case.
"I was feeling helpless and I was feeling hopeless," he said, "and all of a sudden this opportunity came along."
At a June 25 hearing, Turner told an immigration judge in Colorado that his client was an ideal candidate for release.
"She is a 31-year-old mother who wants to be reunited with her child, and she has every reason in the world not to be a threat to the community, and there is no evidence she would be," Turner said.
"She’s not a flight risk. She has ties to the community in Louisiana where she has a sister and a friend who is going to host her. She has a place to live and a fixed address so people can get in touch with her. She understands that if she flees and doesn’t show up for court, she would no longer have a claim for asylum. And that’s what she wants is asylum so she doesn’t have to go back to Honduras, where her life would be in jeopardy."
To get out of the detention center, Rosa would need to post a $1,500 bond, the statutory minimum. And she would need to prove she had a place to live.
Her friend, Karla, invited Rosa and Juan to live in a Louisiana apartment with her and her daughters, ages 2 and 6. Karla lives near Rosa's younger sister, Maria, who came to the U.S. in February 2017 with her daughter, Bea.
Karla said she met Rosa through a mutual friend when she moved to Trujillo six years ago to attend school. When Karla needed a place to live, Rosa's family invited her into their home.
Now, she said, it's time to return the favor.
"I will do whatever I can to receive her to get her out of there," Karla said. "They opened their doors for me when I needed it six years ago.
"I didn’t even know she was coming, but I will do whatever I can for her."
Karla is an important ally for Rosa because she is a green-card holder. Her late husband was a U.S. citizen.
"One of the tricky things is that you have to have permanent legal status to post the bond, and there was some question about whether her sister has permanent legal status," Turner said.
"We also didn’t want the sister to go near the ICE facility where the bond was to be posted just in the circumstance that she gets picked up."
For Maria, 22, that was the safest move. She is undocumented, and wears a tether around her ankle. She has to check in with immigration officers every two months. She got a job in late June, cleaning rooms at a hotel.
Maria borrowed the $1,500 bond money and gave it to Karla to take to the detention center. She posted Rosa's bond June 28, and Rosa was released that night.
"I felt happy, very happy," Rosa said, "because I know that if I’m out, I can do a lot for my son."
A complex handoff
The plan was that when Rosa was released, she would go with volunteers from a nonprofit in Denver called Casa de Paz, where she could stay until transportation could be arranged for her to meet with her sister and Karla.
But the plan she'd made with Turner unraveled as soon as she left the detention center.
Rosa doesn't speak any English, and the scene was chaotic as she stepped outside. Protesters swarmed the street around the detention center.
Rosa didn't know what to do. She sat on a bench, waiting for help that didn't come.
Jose Garcia was released the same night as Rosa; he'd won his asylum case in court earlier that week. When detainees are released, he said, they are sent out the door with nothing — no money, and no way to communicate with family and friends, who often live in other parts of the country. They are left, he said, to figure it out on their own.
"Everyone there was separated from their kids," Garcia said. "That’s all they would talk about. 'I want to go see my kids. I want to go see my son.' Some of them were saying that their wives were separated from their kids, too.
"Sometimes, the dads were being sent back and the wife being allowed to stay. What is the wife going to do on her own, and her husband is being sent back to die in Mexico? It’s hard."
When he learned he was going to be released, Garcia started asking questions. He had the advantage of being fluent in Spanish and English and often acted as a translator for other detainees.
"I asked one of the guards what to do, if there was a place where they can give you shelter and food where you can go," he said. "He said there'll be some volunteers outside, just look around. When we got outside, sure thing, I see a tall guy, and he says, 'Casa de Paz. Do you need a ride?'
"It was by coincidence. You have to ask if there’s any shelter that will take you in. If you don’t ask, they won’t tell you."
Casa de Paz volunteers took Garcia and another man from Haiti to the nonprofit, a house in a residential neighborhood with fully stocked refrigerators and comfortable beds, plus volunteers help immigrants reconnect with their friends and families in the U.S.
When the Free Press called Casa de Paz to ask whether anyone had picked up Rosa that night, a volunteer said no one saw Rosa there waiting for them. She offered to go back to the detention center to look for her.
By the time the volunteer got there, Rosa was gone.
She sat on the bench. She waited.
Rosa knew she was supposed to go to Casa de Paz, but she didn't have an address for it, and couldn't tell people outside the detention center that she needed help getting there.
After sitting there a while, a couple of Americans approached her who seemed willing to help.
Rosa said she got into a car with them. They bought her some food and took her to a Catholic-run homeless shelter for women in Denver.
"Thank God they saw me there and they helped me," Rosa said. "They are Good Samaritans."
The next morning, Rosa said the pair came back to the homeless shelter and took her to Casa de Paz. They gave her $30.
She was thrilled to take a shower and get clean clothes, food and a soft bed to sleep in. Casa de Paz gave her toiletries, too. She used the organization's phone to call her sister and Karla and plan her trip to Louisiana.
It was there she met Jose Garcia, and told him about her long journey to America and what happened to her at the detention center.
Rosa explained that she finally got a chance to speak to her son on June 24 — nearly six weeks after they were separated.
Her lawyer had made repeated calls to several government agencies and finally got a deportation officer to help locate her son. Soon after, Rosa learned that Juan was being held at a detention center in Florence, Arizona.
She cried as she detailed their conversation.
"I asked him, 'How are you doing?' He said, 'Hi, mommy.' I began crying and he kept telling me, 'Don’t cry. I asked him if he was eating, if he was sick, just words a mother would ask.
"He said everything was fine, that he was OK, that he was attending school, that he was forming a soccer league of champions. I heard him happy, calm, and it made me feel well."
Although the conversation eased her nerves, she longed to see him, to hug him again.
Rosa slept that night at Casa de Paz, but by 9 the next morning, she was on a Spirit Airlines flight headed for the Pelican state. And her new friend, Garcia, was getting ready to board a bus to take him to his mother's house in California.
Sarah Jackson, who founded Casa de Paz in 2012 to help immigrant families, said donors paid for Rosa's plane ticket. Some people, like Garcia, have the means to buy their own bus tickets or plane tickets when they are released from the detention center. Others, like Rosa, do not.
When Casa de Paz pays for the tickets, she said she tries to economize to stretch the donors' dollars as far as possible. That meant Rosa flew budget airlines Spirit, and had an eight-hour layover in Houston before changing planes to go the rest of the way to Louisiana.
Volunteers drove her to the airport, and helped explain to her what to do and where to go.
Hope for a reunion
(L to R) Rosa is finally reunited with her sister Maria who she hasn't seen since January of 2016. They met at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana on Friday, June 29, 2018 after Rosa was released from detention in Denver, Colorado and flew to meet her in New Orleans. Rosa came to the United States from Honduras seeking asylum in May 2018 with her son Juan and was detained and separated from him. (Photo: Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)
Karla loaded her daughters into her silver Honda hybrid.
"Vamos," she said as her youngest dawdled while walking to the parking lot of her gated apartment complex.
She was headed across town to pick up Maria, so they could go together to the airport.
They didn't know whether Rosa would be on the plane. They worried about whether she would understand what to do when her flight from Denver landed in Houston. Since Rosa had no cellphone, there was no way to know whether she even got on the plane, and no way to communicate where to pick her up as she left the terminal.
Karla drove across town, and parked her car behind a run-down brick building.
Maria stood outside, holding the hand of 3-year-old Bea, whose curly hair was pulled into tightly braided pigtails.
She buckled her daughter into a seat in the back of Karla's car, and the five of them headed toward the airport as the sun set in the western sky.
About 20 minutes later, Karla parked outside the terminal. She and Maria corralled their three skipping daughters into the airport, trying to curtail the lollygagging as they determined the best place to connect with Rosa.
They decided on a long orange sofa in a lounge by the doors where passengers leave the secured part of the terminal.
As they waited, Maria talked about what it hasbeen like for her since she settled in America. She has cousins here, and she lives now with her boyfriend. It took her a year to find a job.
"Life isn't easy," Maria said, but she's happy her older sister has come to stay with her.
Maria can't drive because she doesn't have a license. She can't get one as an undocumented immigrant, so she takes two buses on an hour-long route to get to her job each day.
And despite the Louisiana heat in midsummer, Maria wears long pants to hide the tether on her ankle.
"There's a lot of racist people. A lot," Maria said. "They look weird at (me) because I wear the bracelet. Just for them, it's not normal."
Maria would like to learn to speak English, and dreams of one day becoming a nurse.
(L to R) Rosa walks with her sister Maria while holding her niece's hand at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, Louisiana on Friday, June 29, 2018. Rosa who came to the United States from Honduras seeking asylum in May 2018 with her son Juan, was detained and separated from him. She was recently released from being held in Denver and made her way to New Orleans to be reunited with Maria who she hasn't seen since January of 2016. (Photo: Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press)
She's afraid of being deported; she left an abusive relationship with Bea's father in Honduras, boarding a bus for the U.S. when he was at work one day. The trip took three months because her group would travel for a little while, and then stop and pick up odd jobs to make money, then travel a little farther and stop again.
When she finally crossed the border, Maria said she was held at a detention center for 15 days before being released with the ankle tether and instructions to report to immigration officers once every two months.
The biggest difference, though, between her experience and Rosa's is that she was able to keep Bea by her side the whole time.
An hour passed in the airport terminal. Maria and Karla's daughters drew pictures on notepads and jumped around.
Then, Rosa walked out from behind a pair of glass doors, and nearly collapsed with relief and joy in Maria's arms.
Rosa bent down to hug Bea, and said to her niece: "I love you."
More than 2,000 motherless children
Rosa was reunited with her sister the evening before mass protests against the "zero-tolerance" immigration policy were held in more than 600 cities across the country, including New Orleans.
The "zero-tolerance" policy ultimately resulted in the separation of more than 2,000 children from their parents or guardians. And even through Trump signed an executive order stopping the separation of asylum-seeking parents from their children, reuniting immigrant parents with their children is a huge challenge.
It has been 51 days since Rosa last saw her son.
"I felt a bit better after hearing his voice after more than one month without seeing him," she said.
"He said, 'Mommy, don’t worry. I’m eating well. They feed me three times (a day) … I’m sleeping well.' At that point, he began telling me about they are going to school and they put together a soccer tournament.”
She hopes to talk to him by phone again this week, but said she was told she could only call on Mondays and Thursdays, and there's no guarantee she'll be able to talk to him even if she tries calling on those days.
Rosa has no lawyer for Juan yet.
"Children are not dealt with through the Department of Homeland Security," Turner said. "It’s through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. My competence is all within DHS and within ICE and within the immigration courts, which are through the Department of Justice. The juvenile process is completely separate."
But, he said, Miller Canfield is working to find an attorney who might be able to help Rosa get reunited with her son.
Rosa wishes things could be different.
Americans, she said, "shouldn’t discriminate for just being immigrants. They should give us an opportunity. We don’t come here with bad intentions. We’re here to work to help our families.
"The truth is, if I had known this, I wouldn’t have left my country because it’s very hard to be separated from your children."
Maybe, just maybe, she said, it would have been worth the risk to stay in Honduras because she would still be together with Juan.
"Perhaps, yes,” she said as tears fell freely. “I don’t know. But, I miss my son a lot."
Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.
Spanish-to-English translation provided by OVP Management Consulting Group Inc.