A mother and child from Honduras, forced apart for nearly two months, are the first family of asylum seekers to be reunited in the Northwest.
Across the country, families that U.S. immigration officials had separated at the U.S.-Mexico border are beginning to be reunited.
Many children under the age of five were returned to their parents in the past week, and now the Trump administration has a second court-ordered deadline to reunite thousands of older children by July 26.
Yolany Padilla had her arm around her six-year-old son Jelsin's shoulder as they emerged from the arrivals area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Saturday.
A small army of reporters awaited them.
Jelsin looked bashful, a bit uncertain about all the TV cameras after flying from New York alone. He wore a wristband for unaccompanied minors and an airplane-wings pin on his chest.
While he occasionally let a smile slide across his face, his mom was positively beaming.
Padilla said, through an interpreter, that it was hard to express how she felt because it was so big.
"It's been so long since I've seen him — imagine how I feel inside," she said.
Padilla said the moment she saw her son at the airport gate, "It was like my heart was going to come out of my body."
The two had crossed the border into Texas in May. Immigration officials separated them the same day. Except for briefly being brought together for a photograph the next day, that was the last they saw of each other for eight weeks.
Jelsin was sent to New York. His mother was held in two federal detention centers in Texas. She said conditions and treatment there were "horrible," with poor food, cold rooms, 15 days at a time without bathing or brushing her teeth and guards who repeatedly yelled at detainees.
Then Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent her to Washington state with hundreds of other asylum seekers.
Padilla called the long-term separation from her son “abuse.”
She was released from the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma last week on $8,000 bond. Immigrant advocates in Washington state raised the funds for her to post bond.
Padilla's asylum hearing has not been scheduled.
"This has happened not because the government's doing the right thing, but because people have had to fight with them to make it happen,” Jorge Barón with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project said. “We hope that this just never happens again."
Barón and Padilla’s lawyer declined to reveal Padilla’s hometown or any information about her life in Honduras or her escape to America. They said doing so might hurt the 24-year-old’s case for gaining asylum here.
Barón did say that Padilla was only released from the Northwest Detention Center after an immigration official determined that she had a credible fear of persecution or torture.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego has given the Trump administration until July 26 to reunite children aged 5-17 with their parents.
The government has identified 2,551 children who could "potentially" have been separated from a parent at the border.
Judge Sabraw on Friday said the administration is demonstrating good faith in its efforts to meet that July deadline.
“There are some bumps to be expected,” he said. “Partners [are] really working through the issues in a very measured and successful way.”
Port of Seattle video of the mother and child reunion at Gate A2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GMSDqVnY7M
