Two-year-old girl marooned in foster care in U.S. after parents deported to countries 1,500 miles apart
A two-year-old girl has been marooned in foster care in the U.S. after her Venezuelan parents were deported to countries 1,500 miles apart.
Yorely Bernal Inciarte and Maiker Espinoza Escalona arrived with their child Maikelys Antonella Espinoza Bernal in Texas on May 14 last year. Neither held valid entry documents so they immediately surrendered to immigration authorities, according to ABC News.
After being held in separate detention facilities in the Lone Star State for several months, able to communicate with one another only by phone, Inciarte was abruptly returned to Venezuela earlier this month – but without her daughter.
She was subsequently shocked to learn that Escalona had been sent first to Guantanamo Bay and then to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador on March 30, meaning their child was without access to either parent.
'When I saw him in a video in El Salvador, I was in shock,' Inciarte said. 'I couldn't stop crying and yelling… I wouldn't wish this on any mother.'
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has since said the child is in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and has been placed with a foster family.
The family's plight has moved Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro to accuse Washington of engaging in 'abduction' and his Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello to allege on a domestic radio show: 'The U.S. government is robbing Venezuelan children.'
But the DHS has justified its actions by claiming that Inciarte and Escalona are 'Tren de Aragua parents,' alleging that the couple are members of the feared Venezuelan criminal organization.
'Despite claims from the Venezuelan government that the U.S. 'kidnapped' a child, the truth is DHS took action because both her parents are part of Tren De Aragua,' it said in a statement issued over the weekend.
'The child's father, Maiker Espinoza-Escalona is a lieutenant of Tren De Aragua who oversees homicides, drug sales, kidnappings, extortion, sex trafficking and operates a torture house.
'The child's mother, Yorely Escarleth Bernal Inciarte oversees recruitment of young women for drug smuggling and prostitution. These criminal illegal aliens entered the country illegally and had final orders of removal from a judge.'
Inciarte, her attorney and her family deny the accusations levelled against her by the DHS.
'If it's true, release the evidence,' she challenged the Trump administration. 'Release the proof that we are Tren de Aragua. They took a child away from their mother and they're telling lies about us.'
ABC reports that the couple have no criminal record in their own country and have no county or federal records in the U.S. beyond the federal criminal case against Inciarte for improper entry last year.
Inciarte's mother Raida said she believed her daughter and Escalona are being accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua because of their tattoos but denied any association with the gang: 'My daughter has a tattoo of the year I was born and the year her dad was born.
'She also has the name of her son and some flowers on her chest. Maiker is a tattoo artist and he would do her tattoos.'
Raida has previously said of the Trump administration: 'They are liars. I cannot believe that half of Venezuela is Tren de Aragua. That can't be.'
Escalona's sister Marly said her sibling was a barber by profession, adding: 'My brother is a 25-year-old guy, a dreamer, like all Venezuelans.
'He loves cutting hair. He finished high school, he took courses in barbering and set up his barbershop in Venezuela. But things got a bit tough in Venezuela, so he emigrated to have a better life.'
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