SEATTLE — Asylum seekers recently reunited with their children got a reprieve today. A federal judge temporarily halted deportations of those families as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
This comes two days after the first migrant in our state was reunited with her young son at Sea-Tac Airport.
No interpreter was needed to recognize the joy this 24-year-old mother from Honduras felt when she held her 6-year-old son for the first time in nearly two months.
"It was like my heart was going come out of my body," said Yolany Padilla in Spanish.
She hadn't seen her son, Jelsin, since they were separated at the Texas border in May. Both had illegally crossed into the United States, seeking asylum.
"I wanted to tell him so many things, but I couldn't," she said, smiling broadly.
Her interpreter was Jorge Baron, executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is representing her and several other asylum seeking parents.
Padilla, he says, is one of an estimated 55 asylum seeking parents brought here to Washington after they were separated from their children at the U.S. southern border. A judge in San Diego gave the federal government until July 26 to reunite the families, but the ACLU sued to prevent federal agents from deporting the parents to meet that deadline.
The judge ruled today that the federal government can't deport any parent for at least a week.
"And we support that ruling," said Baron.
He says Padilla's status won't change. But the ruling could affect other migrants still detained in Washington.
"Yes, because they're still separated from their children," said Baron. "So Yolany, in some ways, is the exeption with actually being reunited with her child. There are still dozens of parents detained at the Northwest Detention Center who are not reunited with their children yet."
The judge in San Diego says he will make a final ruling in the coming days.
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