Lawsuits detail trauma from family separations at the Arizona border as victims begin quest for justice – By Rafael Carranza (Arizona Republic) / Feb 2 2021
Court documents described the moments of anguish that Eliot, a Guatemalan migrant who traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum, and his then-11-year-old son Héctor experienced in the minutes before the U.S. government forcibly separated them under its “zero-tolerance” policy.
The two had crossed the border near Lukeville, in southwestern Arizona, on May 19, 2018, more than a month after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that all adults, including parents traveling with children, would be prosecuted if they crossed the southwestern U.S. border illegally.
Border Patrol agents had transported Eliot and Héctor — both pseudonyms used by the advocacy groups representing the family to protect their identities — to the Ajo Border Patrol station.
They put the two in a 15-foot-by-20-foot “hielera,” or holding cell, where 30 other parents and children waited.
