Guatemalan Mother Talks About The Meeting With Her Son

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Early Friday morning a Guatemalan immigrant mother met her 7-year-old son Darwin at the Baltimore airport after weeks without seeing him. The video of the mother hugging the little one has gone viral and has moved many. Blessed Mariana de Jesús Mejía-Mejía had prayed for this moment since May 21, when immigration officials separated her from her son under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration rules.

Mejía, 38, crossed the border through Arizona to seek asylum in the United States. For more than a month, the mother did not know anything about the child's whereabouts, as she exclusively told PEOPLE.

The woman sued the US government and according to documents in the case in federal court, the boy was crying and screaming when he was separated from his mother. "They separated us but they didn't tell us why they separate us," she said. "When I asked the officer, 'Where are you going to take him?' He ignored my question. He took it and I never knew who, where. I never knew where it went."

Blessed Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia and her son Darwin Micheal Mejia

Mejía says her only option to find Darwin and get him back was to sue the US government. "My son had disappeared and they did not want to return me," he says. "All I wanted was to have him here with me."

The immigrant was escaping domestic violence in her country, where she left behind an abusive husband. According to her, being detained and separated from her son in the United States was very painful. “It is very sad because you think many things: 'Where is she, who is she with? Who is going to give him a plate of food?”He says. "And knowing that she is not is sad, very sad."

Mejía, who was in a detention center in Eloy, Arizona, was released on June 15 thanks to the help of bail company Libre by Nexus, which paid her bail. "Many people do not drink the water because it has a chlorine odor," he recalls. "I had to take it out of necessity because I wanted to survive."

The mother laments what the child suffered without her. It came sad but here it is. I am worried about him psychologically, I think that for him it is a trauma to live this”. On Saturday he and the boy flew to Austin, Texas, where they will stay with friends until they can better plan their future. She hopes that Libre by Nexus can help her stay with her son in the United States.