BOSTON — A Guatemalan woman seeking asylum has been reunited with her 8-year-old daughter after the two were forcibly separated after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts tweeted Thursday that the daughter, who is not being named, arrived at Boston's Logan Airport to her awaiting mother, Angelica Rebeca Gonzalez-Garcia, and a crowd of supporters. The girl was separated from her mother for nearly two months.
Gonzalez-Garcia said she had lost a part of herself, and thought she was never going to get her daughter back.
"I thought my life had ended," Gonzalez-Garcia said. "And I was never going to see my daughter again."
Now, she's feeling the opposite emotions.
"I don't have words to express the happiness that my heart feels,' Gonzalez-Garcia said. "Because the whole of my life is here today."
The daughter said she didn't know what to think when she was separated from her mother for all that time,
"I thought I was going to see my mother there," the 8-year-old said. I thought I was going to be with her all these years."
The ACLU and two other law firms had filed an emergency lawsuit to reunite the family.
Gonzalez-Garcia says the two were apprehended in Arizona in May and separated. Gonzalez-Garcia was released in Colorado and now lives in Massachusetts, but her daughter was sent to a Texas shelter.
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President Donald Trump recently ended his administration's practice of separating families detained at the border.
Over in Chicago, a Brazilan mother and her 10-year-old son were also separated in May, and reunited on Thursay.
The 30-year-old mother and her son will be living in the Hyannis area, where she had been staying with family and friends.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Cox Media Group
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