‘Yo Soy la Mamá’: A Migrant Mother’s Struggle to Get Back Her Son

Under an interstate compact, Massachusetts formally asked Florida to approve the relocation. Florida said no. Though a caseworker found Olga to have a clean record, a proper home and sufficient income, she denied the move because Olga was not a legal U.S. resident.

Massachusetts does not consider undocumented status a reason to prevent reunification with a parent. But intensely cautious amid a scandal involving another child’s death, the state’s child protection authorities froze, sending Ricardo on a destabilizing odyssey through the foster care system. In a case that reveals the unique vulnerabilities of unauthorized immigrant parents, Olga risked losing her son forever.

Immigrant family separation did not start or stop with the Trump administration’s thwarted “zero tolerance” policy. Now as before, and with record numbers of new unauthorized immigrants fanning out across the country, it happens more insidiously.

“When people think of family separation, they think of the Southern border and kids in cages,” said Lori Nessel, director of an immigrant rights clinic at Seton Hall Law School in New Jersey. “But people don’t realize how much this occurs every day in the interior of the country.”

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