Eleven-year-old Ederson Galicia Alva has been reunited with his mother after a year of separation, but the trauma of past experiences leaves him fearing another split. The family was allowed to return to Florida last week following a federal judge's ruling that the government had acted illegally in separating them.
Ederson was first taken from his mother's arms at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018 under the Trump administration's family separation policy. He was kept in a government facility for months before lawyers intervened. Then, in June 2023, they were separated again, despite legal protections designed to prevent such separations.
An Associated Press investigation has found that the government has re-separated dozens of children from their families, despite a landmark legal settlement intended to keep them together. Some parents have been held in immigration detention for months; others have been deported after being taken from their families again.
Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said: 'Not only has the government refused to acknowledge the horror of the initial separations during Trump I, but it is now detaining and deporting these same families. These children have suffered enough without re-traumatizing them.'
Under the current administration's second term, it has vowed to deport more than one million people per year. Federal agents have been removing individuals so swiftly that the parents of tens of thousands of children have now been detained, according to the Brookings Institution.
Ederson's family's status remains precarious. After being taken from his mother and confined to a government shelter in Arizona as a toddler, Ederson barely recognised her once they were reunited. Vivid nightmares haunted him throughout elementary school.
