![]() (rooster crowing) (laughter) (man speaking Spanish) > SMITH: Like Maritza, Arnovis and his daughter left fleeing violence. > SMITH: Arnovis gave me a tour of his one-room home. > SMITH: What would you like to say to her right now? (Arnovis speaking Spanish): (woman on other end of phone): > Oh, okay. (phone dialing) He was calling a shelter in Arizona where she was being held. It had been one month since he'd seen his daughter Meybelin. I found him, Arnovis Guidos Portillo, in a tiny village three hours outside the capital. ![]() (man speaking Spanish) A few days later, I traveled to El Salvador, Central America, to visit a father who had been separated from his six-year-old child after crossing into the U.S. > SMITH: While Maritza and Wilfredo may be denied asylum, they are still together. So we're keeping families together, at the same time, it continues to be zero tolerance for people that enter our country illegally. ![]() Nobody's had the political courage to take care of it, but we're going to take care of it. On the evening news, the signing of Trump's executive order. (announcement on loudspeaker) (speaking Spanish) > SMITH: Later that night, Maritza and Wilfredo waited for a bus to take them on a two-day journey to be reunited with a brother living in Virginia. We will be overrun with crime and with people that should not be in our country. We're keeping families together but we have to keep our borders strong. > The dilemma is that if you're weak, if you're really, really pathetically weak, the country's gonna be overrun with millions of people, and if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. Immigrants must be taken care of as immigrants, families who are fleeing violence, who need protection, and we need to understand the reason why they're here. > I believe that just because you're an immigrant doesn't automatically make you a criminal. > SMITH: The president says that the people that are coming in can be criminals, they can be very bad people. Please, God, don't let them take my child." They saw other parents' children taken away from them.Īnd they would be praying, "Please, not my child. "Sister, what's happening to the children?" (conversing in Spanish) > They're concerned. I asked her about the impact of Trump's separation policy on the families she had seen at her shelter. (translator): (Maritza speaking): (baby crying in background) > SMITH: This shelter was founded in 2014 by Sister Norma Pimentel. > SMITH: In the meantime, Maritza wears an ankle bracelet that allows the government to track her movements. > SMITH: The day I met Maritza happened to be the same day President Trump issued his executive order halting more separations.įamilies would be allowed to remain together while their asylum claims were considered. (speaking Spanish): > SMITH: Were you aware of the risks of being separated from your child when you came? So tell us your story about why you came at this time? They crossed the border at a time when many families were being separated. (people talking in background) I met them at this shelter in McAllen, Texas, Maritza Amaya and her nine-month-old son Wilfredo. > SMITH: After several hours of wandering in the hot sun looking for help, they found some Border Patrol agents and asked for asylum.Īfter 24 hours in a holding cell, they were released. > Yeah, but they've been trying all day to. > SMITH: In mid-June, a young woman and her son from El Salvador took a raft across the Rio Grande into southern Texas. Minors come up north but then went south. ![]() > These two are probably the guides for a larger group. The number of Border Patrol agents has doubled to some 20,000. (radio chatter) Since 9/11, security is up. Where there are gaps, aerostat blimps surveil from above. Nearly 700 of them have a wall or a fence. (dogs barking) (clanging) ♪ ♪ > SMITH: The border spans over 1,900 miles. > NARRATOR: Tonight, "Separated: Children at the Border." > There's a very high likelihood a lot of these parents are never going to see their kids again. > NARRATOR: And the impact on children and families. I think on the right, your enforcement is never strong enough, and on the left, you're never being humanitarian enough. The policy decisions through two presidencies. > NARRATOR: Tonight on "Frontline," correspondent Martin Smith with an investigation that reaches from Central America to Washington, DC. > NARRATOR: Under pressure, the president reversed course. > I've seen a lot of terrible things in my 34 years, but we have to address the border. > MARTIN SMITH: How can you not condemn that? > NARRATOR: One year later, it shocked the world. While everyone's waiting to see whether they're going to enact a policy, they were doing it anyway. > There were hundreds and hundreds of little children who had been taken from their parents. ♪ ♪ > NARRATOR: In the summer of 2017, the Trump administration quietly began a controversial program.
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