Deported Venezuelan mother asks Melania Trump to help them reunite with their children
Caracas, Venezuela (AP) – María Alejandra Rubio hasn’t seen her son for five months. When she was detained and deported to her hometown of Venezuela, they were separated in the United States, and he was sent to live with family and friends.
Rubio said U.S. immigration authorities convinced her that she would board a plane to Venezuela with her 8-year-old son Anderson. But she did not have a long journey last month without him.
Heartbroken, Rubio is now part of a group of Venezuelan mothers and grandmothers calling on our first lady Melania Trump to help them meet their children and grandchildren again. Members of the group, supported by the Venezuelan government, said they sent a letter to Trump last month seeking her assistance.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I want to be with you. I want to go back to my country with you.’ “So, I really want the first lady to put her hands on her heart and answer our letter. ”
Trump’s office did not immediately respond to the Associated Press request for comment on the letter. The Venezuelan government told AP on Thursday that the date is August 18, sent to the White House via private mail delivery service.
“We ask you as a mother to raise your voice and help our children return home and become a bridge to the justice and humanity you demanded by yourself,” the group members wrote in Spanish, according to a copy of the letter shared with the Associated Press. “We ask you to listen to the voices of the family, to prevent this separation policy from continuing, simply deporting the mother and their children.”
Venezuelans have been steadily deported to their homeland this year after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, under pressure from the White House, did not accept his long-term policy of not accepting deportation from U.S. immigrants, and is now run by classes in the state of the U.S. government contractor or Venezuela or Venezuela.
The Maduro government said that by mid-August, more than 10,000 immigrants, including children, had returned to South American countries. But not all parents travel with their children.
Among the minors separated from their parents, 2-year-old Maikelys Espinoza. After her mother was deported to Venezuela, she remained in the United States, and her father was sent to the highest security prison in El Salvador at the invitation of President Donald Trump invoking 18th-century wartime laws to quickly expel hundreds of immigrants.
The U.S. government says Maikelys’ separation makes sense because U.S. authorities linked her parents to Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua Gang, whose Republican president designated a terrorist group. The girl was reunited with her mother in Venezuela in mid-May and was reunited with her father when she was released from the El Salvador prison in July.
After Maikelys arrived in Venezuela, Maduro publicly thanked President Trump. The United States does not recognize Maduro as the president of Venezuela, but has carried out various actions with his administration this year, including the release of several Americans detained in South American countries. However, the U.S. government said it may take time for minors to return to Venezuela.
The U.S. Department of State’s Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau released on August 8.
Like Venezuelan government officials, mothers and grandmothers who signed a letter seeking a child’s return to their homeland also described their stay in the United States as kidnapping.
“You don’t have contact with the child and don’t know where the child is, it’s a kidnapping. We don’t know where she is,” Cáceres said Thursday, referring to her 4-year-old granddaughter Aurore.
Caseres said her grandson was in foster care in Georgia after being detained in July. She said the family caring for Orol allowed her to talk to the girl once last month but later told her that the Child Protection Service directed the family to end any contact with her grandmother.
Cáceres now wants to make sure her son and granddaughter are deported when time comes.
“If they’re going to expel people, that’s OK, but they should be deported with their kids,” she said. “If (President Trump) doesn’t want us to be in his country, it’s OK, it’s OK. Deport us, send us back, but all together.”
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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to the Washington report.
