National

Honduran immigrant mom waits to be reunited with baby girl caught at border

SULPHUR, La. — Sendy Karina Ferrera Amaya opened her mouth, and a gloved hand gave each cheek a perfunctory brush with a cotton swab.

Fifteen seconds, and the $429 DNA test she'd paid for was over. "Eso es todo," the lab technician said in Spanish last Thursday. That was it. Ferrera, 25, gave a tentative smile and walked out to join her fiancé. Squeezing his hand as they drove away, she allowed herself to hope. To imagine her curly-haired 1-year-old daughter wrapped in her arms, much bigger and more wiggly than last time she held her. Maybe next week, she would finally be reunited with Liah, whose name she wore around her neck like a talisman.

Even though the Trump administration is under a court order to reunite children who were separated from their parents under the “zero tolerance” immigration policy, Ferrera has no idea what that means for her family. Liah had traveled from Honduras with her uncle in mid-April. Ferrera was in the U.S. already in Louisiana, having entered undetected months earlier.

She has spent the three months since Liah was taken into U.S. custody trying to get her daughter released from foster care for unaccompanied immigrant children — doing her best to prove to the U.S. government that she is Liah’s mother, and a good one.

She spoke with ProPublica about that experience, allowing a reporter to accompany her to a DNA test and sharing three months of daily communications over WhatsApp with her caseworker which catalogue what have felt to her like a never-ending list of requirements she needs to meet to see her daughter again.

They shed light on the bureaucratic maze that families encounter when trying to retrieve a child from the immigrant foster system run by the Department of Health and Human Services — a place where the rights of foreign parents collide with U.S. officials’ stated desire to protect the interests of children whose backgrounds are unknown to them.

Ferrera’s daughter is one of 11,800 unaccompanied minors in HHS care, many of whom are older kids who traveled alone to reunite with relatives or family friends here. Officials would not say how many more, like Liah, are under 5, but last year almost 7,000 kids under 12 passed through HHS shelters.

Like Ferrera, many of the relatives and friends trying to claim these kids are undocumented, presenting a conflict in which they have to submit to extensive background checks from one arm of the government, HHS, knowing that another arm of the government, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is combing the country to find and deport undocumented people. The fear of deportation has prompted some to avoid the process, leaving kids languishing in the system.

Ferrera was nervous about what could happen at first, but she knew this was the only way to get her daughter back. “If it’s my turn to leave, I’ll go,” Ferrera said. “But with my daughter. Not alone. And so I’m doing this for her.”

She has provided U.S. officials with her Honduran ID, birth certificates, passport, bank statements, proofs of address, fingerprints, extensive documentation for her fiancé, phone contacts and identification for family in Honduras, call logs of her past video calls with her daughter — even ultrasounds, doctors’ records and a photo of matching hospital bracelets from the day Liah was born.

So far, it hasn’t been enough.

HHS officials told ProPublica they would not comment on individual cases. Liah’s caseworkers did not respond to multiple interview requests.

In the past, HHS has come under fire for lax vetting standards: During a period in 2014 when the agency relaxed fingerprint requirements, eight teens were released to human traffickers and were forced to work in slave-like conditions on an egg farm. The agency has since beefed up requirements for reunification, and in recent weeks, HHS officials have defended the system, pointing out that stringent vetting is meant to ensure that children are kept safe.

“Our process may not be as quick as some might like, but there is no question that it is protecting children,” an HHS official said in a phone call with reporters last week. In the process of vetting the parents of 103 separated children under 5, the agency says it found 11 adults with serious criminal histories, one allegation of abuse, and one circumstance in which the adult planned to house a child with a pedophile.

After a judge found HHS was not reunifying separated families fast enough, HHS filed court papers Friday indicating it will loosen its vetting restrictions for the parents of children who fall under the court order.

To Ferrera, the process has felt maddeningly opaque. Each day that passes without an approval gives her a sick, sinking feeling. She has kept up a constant stream of WhatsApp messages to Liah’s caseworker, an employee for Southwest Key, the largest licensed nonprofit shelter provider for unaccompanied children who cross the border.

Ferrera’s fears continue to grow that the government will deem her unfit to receive her child and instead allow Liah to be adopted by someone else.

HHS officials sent ProPublica a general statement, saying, “(The) first preference, consistent with federal law, is to release the child to their parent or legal guardian … Reunification is the ultimate goal … and we are working toward that for those unaccompanied alien children currently in our custody.”

Ferrera has read the comments on articles about mothers who took their children on the dangerous journey to cross the American border.

“They say, ‘Why did you leave your country? You know that you can’t stay here because you are illegal.’ They judge you,” she said. “And maybe in this interview, and when you write this report, more people will judge me.”

Despite the potential for “cruel comments” and threat of deportation, she said she wanted ProPublica to tell her story. “While there are some people who criticize,” she said, “there are other people who understand.”

Liah was only two months old when Ferrera headed north with a smuggler, the wound from her C-section still healing. She hated leaving her newborn in her brother’s care, but felt she couldn’t wait any longer.

In the worst moments, Ferrera says she remembers the day Liah was born. “She was crying. Then, when she got near me, she became quiet. She stopped crying,” Ferrera said. “And then I realized that she knew that I was her mama and that she was with me and that she felt secure and protected. And this is what helped me keep going forward, to keep protecting her, always, keep going.”

ProPublica's Jess Ramirez and Claire Perlman contributed reporting.

This is an excerpt from a ProPublica story originally published Monday, July 16.