A Father and Son Were Finally Reunited. Later that Day, the Government Ripped Them Apart Again.

A Saturday night court filing alleges yet another heartbreaking story of family separation—but this time, the government did it twice.

Matt York/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

After more than 50 days apart, a migrant father known in legal documents as “F.G.,” was reunited with his 17-year-old son in Texas on Wednesday. Guards loaded them onto a bus, where they were told they would be taken to a shelter. But eight minutes down the road, the bus turned around.

When they pulled back into the El Paso Service Processing Center, uniformed officials allegedly distributed forms for the parents on the bus to sign that meant they agreed to be deported with their children. When F.G. refused, he was removed from the bus and separated from his son a second time.

That’s according to a heartbreaking declaration filed by F.G.’s pro-bono lawyer Saturday night as part of the class-action lawsuit overseeing the government’s attempt to reunify the more than 2,500 families separated at the border this year. According to the declaration, F.G. was not alone: At least four fathers were reunited briefly with their kids, but were separated again when they refused to sign the forms, which gave them three “choices”: agree to be deported with their children, agree to allow their child to stay in the United States if the parent lost their immigration case, or talk to a lawyer before deciding. According to the lawyer, Laila Arand, F.G. and other fathers say the first option on their forms was pre-selected in ink.

Dara Lind at Vox got a response to the allegations from a Department of Homeland Security official:

“Asking parents in ICE custody, who are subject to a final order of removal, to make a decision about being removed with or without their children, is part of long-standing policy,” the official said. “ICE does not interfere in the parent’s decision to allow the child to remain in the U.S. to pursue his or her own legal claim.”

But Saturday night’s filing offers evidence of ICE agents doing just that. Either all four parents who spoke to the lawyer are lying, or the lawyer’s declaration shows that the choice isn’t always being freely offered — and that parents who select the second option are having their children summarily taken from them, with no chance to say goodbye, for the second time in a matter of months.

As for F.G., after he was separated from his son for the second time, “he then asked if he could at least go back to the bus to retrieve his belongings from the storage area underneath the bus, and was told he could do so quickly,” Arand wrote. “When he went to the bus to do so, his son attempted to come outside the bus to see him, but was unable to do so…He watched the bus depart with his son on board.”

According to the declaration, F.G. was kept in El Paso for two nights before being returned to an immigration detention detention center in New Mexico, where he remained as of Friday.

Read the story of the fathers here:

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate