Plan to reunite immigrant families questioned by attorneys, advocates in Texas

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Sitting between a golf club, a national wildlife refuge and South Texas vacation beaches, an adult detention facility houses migrant parents who have only a vague idea of where their children are, while others wait to speak to their children since being separated from them under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy.

In a fact sheet published late Saturday, federal officials identified the Port Isabel Detention Center as the facility where thousands of families separated by the policy will be reunited, as well as from where they will be deported. About 1,200 adult detainees were inside as of Sunday, said a trio of attorneys who have spent the past three days interviewing more than 100 parents desperate to hear their child’s voice.

“I would say, at most, 5 percent of the people I spoke to had contact with their children,” said civil rights attorney Sirine Shebaya. “Even the people who did speak with their kids spoke to them once for a very quick phone call.”

It fact sheet states that the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services have a process established to ensure family members know the location of their children and have regular communication after separation.

But for one mother, that one- to two-minute phone call was impossible.

"Her son is deaf and mute, so they can't communicate," said Shebaya, a member of the Virginia-based Dulles Justice Coalition, a nonpartisan alliance of volunteers from legal non-profits and law firms.

As of Sunday, Ofelia Calderon, an attorney who conducted interviews alongside Shebay, said only about 30 percent of the adults she spoke to had some type of contact with their child or children. About 5 percent of the roughly 50 interviewees claimed they didn't know where their child was, she said.

"I haven’t seen it play out at all," Calderon said of the reunification process. "That doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Let me be clear — I’m not saying it’s not happening. I’m saying that I haven’t seen it."

Shebay and her colleagues conducted the interviews to track the family separations and connect those facing a charge of illegal entry — a federal misdemeanor — with legal representation.

Detainees at Port Isabel provide written requests to ICE officials to speak to their children, said attorney Thelma Garcia, whose four current clients are housed at the facility.

One of Garcia’s clients is a Guatemalan woman who was detained with her 16-year-old son by Border Patrol on June 15. The pair was attempting to enter the U.S. without the proper documentation.

Their first stop was a Customs and Border Patrol processing center in McAllen.

There, agents escorted the woman to her first court hearing and asked her to leave her son behind, Garcia said.

She came back and he was gone, Garcia said. She submitted the written request the same day she was transported to Port Isabel.

As of Friday, the woman has yet to speak to her son and she does not know where the teen is, Garcia said.

“She said there were over 70 women in there with her — all the same situation,” Garcia said.

Follow Beatriz Alvarado on Twitter: @CallerBetty

WSBTV