A pair of 4-year-old children separated from their fathers at the U.S.-Mexico border and taken to a South Florida migrant shelter were returned to their parents Tuesday, a law firm representing the families told the Miami Herald.
The kids, a boy and girl from Honduras and Guatemala, were the first immigrant children in Florida to be returned to their parents following President Donald Trump’s short-lived “zero tolerance” immigration policy, said Jennifer Anzardo Valdes, the director of the Children’s Legal Program at Americans for Immigrant Justice.
“The children were successfully reunited. Families are doing great and very happy to be together,” Valdes told the Herald in an email Tuesday evening.
The small children are among the more than 50 immigrant kids around the country under the age of 5 that the Trump administration said it would reunite with their parents by a Tuesday deadline imposed by California U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw last month.
Since Trump’s “zero tolerance” was announced in April, more than 2,000 kids have been separated from their parents and shipped off to shelters across the country.
The two families whose kids ended up in South Florida crossed into the U.S. separately, one in mid-May and the other in early June, Anzardo Valdes said.
The children were then taken from their dads to one of three immigrant shelters in Miami-Dade County, the name of which Americans for Immigrant Justice said it cannot disclose.
The law firm represents immigrant children living in Miami-Dade County’s three immigrant shelters — located in Homestead, Cutler Bay and Miami Gardens — and adults being held in detention centers throughout the state.
Last month, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, told the Miami Herald there were 265 separated children spread across the Dade shelters. That included 10 kids who were under 5 years old.
Despite repeated requests made by members of her staff, Wasserman Schultz has not received updated numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services.
By Martin Vassolo for MIAMI HERALD
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