An illegal alien wants to sponsor an illegal alien.
Via Baltimore Sun:
A Honduran woman who has been living in Baltimore for 14 years is seeking permission to take in a young granddaughter who has been separated from her mother at the Southwest Border, she said Thursday.
Carmen, who agreed to speak to The Baltimore Sun on the condition that she be identified only by her middle name, said her daughter and granddaughter are seeking asylum to escape gang violence in their Central American country.
She said 27-year-old Lilian and 6-year-old Genesis were detained this month in Laredo, Texas, and are being held in separate facilities.
“I asked God not to separate them, but it was impossible,” Carmen, 40, said in Spanish in the living room of her Highlandtown rowhouse.
She said she has been living in the United States illegally since 2004 and fears for her safety. But the undocumented immigrant has applied to the federal government to sponsor Genesis — to take her in while Lilian’s asylum application progresses.
At least nine families in Maryland have relatives who have been split up at the border since the Trump Administration implemented a “zero-tolerance” policy in early May of prosecuting immigrants who enter the country illegally, according to the Esperanza Center.
Officials at the immigrant resource center in East Baltimore, a program of Catholic Charities, said they expect to help more relatives in the coming weeks who are trying to sponsor young children who were separated from their families after crossing the border.
Center director Valerie Twanmoh said a woman arrived at the center Thursday morning asking for help connecting with her husband and son, who she said were separated at the border 10 days earlier.
Helany J. Sinkler, a family reunification program manager at the center, called the separations “a Maryland issue.”
“This is very local,” she said. “There are children that are going to be going into our schools come fall who have gone through family separation and endured trauma. Are we going to be prepared?”[…]
Sen. Chris Van Hollen said Thursday he had successfully added language to an appropriations bill that would make it easier for lawmakers to access information about immigrants detained by federal agencies.
The amendment to a homeland security appropriations bill would advise ICE to provide every detainee in custody with a copy of a privacy waiver form.
To Carmen, the zero-tolerance policy has criminalized her daughter’s attempt to find a better life in America, away from the violence that she said plagues Honduras.
“It’s difficult to stay in a country where you can’t live, where there’s danger, where you run risks of being murdered,” she said. “That’s why they prefer to suffer on the journey here than to stay and die in their countries or live in poverty.”
Carmen planned for Lilian and Genesis to live with her and her husband in their home. Now she’s just waiting for her granddaughter’s next phone call on Friday, and hoping to be approved as a sponsor.