“If I Could Just Look at Her”

In October, the Trump administration admitted that in a 12-month period, beginning in July 2017, it separated 4,370 immigrant children from their parents at the border. Since then, over 1,000 more have been separated under a dubious loophole that allows the government to take children away from their parents if they have a criminal record or are suspected of fraud.

Hundreds of parents were deported to their home countries without their children, with no clear plan to reunify them. Given the impossible choice of having those children returned to dangerous situations or allowing them to stay in the safety of the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, many parents faced the prospect of never seeing their kids again. Along with a group of partner organizations, in 2018 the ACLU set out to find those parents and help them reunite with their children.

“Maria” was separated from her teenage daughter on Christmas Day in 2017. In this short documentary, watch her and another parent, Nery, as they travel to the border to try and make an asylum claim and see their children again. And read more about them here.