Washington Post
By Pamela Constable
September 9, 2015
Steven
Chicas burst through the front door, flushed with excitement. It was
his first day in second grade, and he had brought home a backpack full
of crayons, books and
a sketch pad with his drawing of an apple tree, surrounded by stick
figures.
“There’s
Mami and Papi, Carlos and Kevin, Rafael and Anthony,” said the wiry boy
of 9, pointing to each figure that August afternoon. “And there’s me
and the cat,” he
added happily.
Milagros
Chicas, a house cleaner in Hyattsville, Md., listened to her son with a
mixture of pride, relief and remorse. When Steven was only 6 weeks old,
she left him with
relatives in El Salvador and made her way to Maryland. She did not see
him again until he reached here early last year.
Steven
was among a wave of about 65,000 children from Central America who
flooded the U.S.-Mexico border during 2014, most of them smuggled north
to rejoin parents who
had left them behind. The unprecedented influx raised public alarm and
taxed government resources.
Today,
the surge of minors has ended, but the presidential race has injected
new venom into the debate over illegal immigration. Republican candidate
Donald Trump has
proposed that all 11 million illegal immigrants be deported and that
their U.S.-born children lose their constitutional birthright as
American citizens.
Meanwhile,
90 percent of the surge children have been resettled into Latino
communities across the country, including about 3,000 in the Washington
region. By law, all
of them could face deportation, but few hearings have been held and
some are applying for humanitarian visas or political asylum.
Some
of the youngsters have adapted well, according to counselors, but
others have continued to struggle with language barriers, emotional
trauma from the past, and conflicts
with new or estranged relatives.
Steven,
withdrawn and nervous when he arrived, has evolved into a confident,
cheerful child. Although he barely attended school in El Salvador, he
made remarkable progress
in first grade and already speaks better English than anyone in his
family.
But
he was not the only son Milagros left behind when she fled her homeland
to find a toehold in America. Carlos, now 15, made the cross-border
journey five years ago
and has had a rockier transition. Kevin, 16, waited the longest to make
the attempt, while Milagros pulled together funds to pay smugglers one
more time.
“I
don’t know if I made a right or wrong decision to leave them, but I
made sure they never lacked clothing and other things,” she said in a
tearful interview in July.
“Now two of them are safe with me, but my job will not be done until
the last one is here. My heart is still in two places.”
To
be reunited with one’s family is “a lovely idea,” said Alma Hamar, a
psychologist in the District. “It starts out marvelous, but then
conflicts emerge.” At home, many
have to deal with new siblings or stepparents; at school, they may feel
isolated and ashamed. “They don’t know who to trust, and their parents
don’t have the time or the tools to help them,” she said.
For
these long-separated children, two key factors determine whether they
make successful transitions, according to Hamar and other counselors.
One
is what they experienced back home — how they were treated by
caretakers, how far they went in school, whether their parents stayed in
close touch. The other is what
they faced after arriving here — how they navigated living with new
relatives, how fast they learned English, whether they got professional
therapy.
Steven
and Carlos suffered more than many. Farmed out to reluctant relatives,
both were mistreated by some of their caretakers, Milagros says, and
both carried emotional
scars.
Although
their mother originally hoped to save money and return home, she met
and married a Guatemalan immigrant and had two more children, giving up
on her plan to go
back to her children.
On
the other hand, Milagros has worked hard to make up for the years of
separation. Once Carlos and Steven arrived, she made sure they attended
school, accompanied her
to church and signed up for counseling at Mary’s Center, a nonprofit
health agency.
Maria
Vethencourt, a counselor at Mary’s Center, said that the family is
unusually close-knit and that Milagros is determined to keep it
together. She never learned English,
and she still has trouble finding the right bus, but the mother who
once abandoned her children is now the rock in their lives.
“I
often ask myself what qualities make family reunification a success,”
Vethencourt said. “Resilience is important, and faith can help. They
also need time to get to
know and trust each other. The children have already been abandoned
once. Milagros has made it clear she won’t let that happen again.”
The
day Milagros left El Salvador in 2006, Steven was too young to
understand what was happening, but 7-year-old Carlos clung to her in
tears.
“He
said, ‘Don’t leave, Mami, we can eat dirt, you don’t have to go,’ ” she
recounted with chagrin. ‘I told him, ‘I am doing this for you, my
son.’ ”
In
2010, smugglers dropped Carlos at an exit on the Capital Beltway. He
was now a taciturn adolescent, prone to angry outbursts. With therapy,
he began to talk about the
experiences that had scarred him. He also began rescuing small animals
and caring for them in the family’s tiny apartment.
“Once
he brought home some kittens full of fleas. They had no mother,”
Milagros recalled with a grimace. “He suffered a lot during those years,
so now he wants to help
every other creature.”
One
recent afternoon, Carlos cradled a small orange cat while he described
how some older relatives had treated him in El Salvador. “They tied me
to a tree and hit me,”
he mumbled. “I really wanted to go to school, but they said it was a
waste of time.”
Carlos
has now spent five straight years in school. He made the honor roll in
the seventh grade and recently began his freshman year at High Point
High School. “I like
science and math and soccer,” he said, dangling a piece of string for
the kitten. “But I like animals most.”
By
2014, when Steven reached Maryland in a smuggler’s van, he had endured
far worse. According to Milagros, relatives in El Salvador denied him
food and forced him to
stand on his head as a punishment. Whenever she called, though, they
insisted everything was fine.
“I never knew how much he suffered,” she said. “He never told me.”
At
first, Steven was too nervous to take off his dirty clothes for
washing. He was soon enrolled in counseling, but he drew more emotional
strength from his newfound family.
He
often clung to his mother, lying in her lap. He found a natural
protector in Carlos and new playmates in his younger half-brothers
Rafael and Anthony, now 7 and 4.
He also liked to pet the orange kitten.
Despite
his lack of education, Steven also proved an eager student. By June,
after just one year of school, he was easily using words such as
“lobster” and “guitar.” After
his birthday party in August, he announced, “Now I am 9, and next I
will be 10. Then I will know a lot of words.”
Even
with Carlos and Steven safely settled, Milagros continued to worry
about Kevin, still in El Salvador. Last year, the growing threat of gang
violence made him anxious
to leave. So once more, she borrowed several thousand dollars to pay a
smuggler.
In
May, Kevin reached the U.S. border. He turned himself in and spent four
months in a government shelter, waiting to be processed for release.
One day in August, Milagros
was waiting when Kevin landed at Dulles Airport. When they reached
Hyattsville, Kevin was greeted by two brothers he had not seen in years
and two half-brothers he had never met.
A
week of school visits, health exams and legal consultations followed.
Milagros hopes Kevin will qualify for a humanitarian visa, and she says
she will do whatever she
must to keep her boys with her.
For
now, she has told them not to fight over the bathroom, and to watch out
for each other. Kevin, the biggest, is shy and speaks no English, but
he completed middle school
in El Salvador and is now starting at High Point with Carlos.
“Don’t let anyone bully him,” Milagros instructed Carlos.
One
recent afternoon, Kevin and Carlos wrestled on the sofa, then devoured a
stack of sandwiches while listening to Latino rap. Steven helped Rafael
with his math. Anthony
fell asleep, and Kevin carried him into the bunk room.
Milagros smiled.
“Finally
my heart is in one place,” she said in Spanish. “At night, I can look
at all my boys sleeping. They are crowded together, but they are here. I
swear, I will never
leave them again.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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