Donelda Pulex stepped off the airplane into the sun, holding her 5-year-old daughter’s hand. She began to cry. Fourteen-year-old Hermelindo Juarez hid his face as his father held him. Efildo Daniel Vasquez walked carefully behind his 8-year-old son. Eleven families that had been detained and separated at the U.S. border returned home to Guatemala. They appeared quiet, unsure and tired.

They flew to Guatemala on a plane rented by the U.S. government. Guatemalan first lady Patricia Marroquin greeted them when the plane landed.

U.S. immigration officials turned the families’ paperwork over to the Guatemalan officials. Then, the families walked together into a wide, gray building on the country’s military base to be processed back into their home country.

Rented planes full of deportees from the United States often arrive in the Central American country. But this flight was among the first to return families separated at the border under President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy.

More than 2,300 children were separated from their families before an executive order ended the separations on June 20. Although some Central American migrants say they were fleeing their home country to protect their family from violence, the parents who spoke with the Associated Press said they had made the difficult, dangerous crossing to the United States for a better life. They were hoping to get a good job or provide a better education for their children.

They did not know they would be separated from their children under the policy, which criminally charged anyone caught crossing the border illegally. Trump administration officials had said the policy was necessary to put an end to a growing number of illegal border crossings. Trump ended the separations following national and international anger.

The parents who spoke with the AP said they were upset that their difficult journeys had ended in failure. But they also said they were happy to no longer be separated from their children. Donelda Pulex said she was separated from her daughter for two months as she waited in an El Paso, Texas, detention center.

Aliqismet BADALOV,
“Khalq qazeti”