With suitcases on the shoulder, faces of anguish and strengthened hope, dozens of Guatemalan mothers and fathers arrived in the early hours of this Sunday, August 31 to the return center of returnees, in zone 13 capital, to receive their minor children, deported from the United States, but the wait became uncertainty: the two planned flights were canceled.
“He warned us at 1.00 hours that they had already come to deport it. We traveled from San Marcos to see it, and now we do not know when it will arrive,” Xiomara Lima, mother of Gerson Gabriel Gregoria Lima, a 17 -year -old teenager who spent four months in a shelter for migrants, after being arrested in the United States.
Xiomara held a copy of a photograph of his son with force. I hadn’t slept. I just wanted to hug him. “He caught migration. He says he couldn’t take it there anymore,” he said. Its history is repeated among other families that, like her, cling to the possibility of seeing their children return alive.
In the Cantinil Union, Huehuetenango, Bertilda López also left his house before dawn to wait for his son in the capital. The young man had migrated four years ago to help her face her health problems.
“We didn’t know anything about him until last night. He called us to warn that they deported him. We left as we could,” said Gilberto López, uncle of Emerson Wilvani Morales López.
“He left to help us, because we are poor and there is no way to heal. They are minor, they don’t know what awaits them there,” he added.
Amid tears, hugs between relatives and silences that say more than words, families remain at the entrance of the center, some without even knowing if their children come in the next few days.
Temporary suspension in the US.
While in Guatemala this distressing wait is lived, in the United States a federal court temporarily blocked the deportation of more than 600 Guatemalan minors.
The United States District Court for the Columbia district ordered a suspension of at least 14 days, after a resource presented by a human rights organization.
The measure has given a momentary respite to hundreds of families, but does not solve the drama of the drama: children and adolescents migrating alone, arrested away from home, and parents who, thousands of kilometers, just want to hug them again.
With information from EFE
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