Over the last four weeks of 2021, Olga, a Honduran refugee in Hollywood, Fla., grew extremely worried. She could hardly discover her 5- year- aged son, Ricardo. After she’d fled her country to avoid her abusive spouse, the person even migrated, disappeared with the child and broke off email.
By evening, Olga lived her life. She cut, shaded and styled hair at a Miami shop, chatting with customers as if she had n’t a care in the world. She mothered her 7- year- older girl, Dariela, straining to divert her from the fact that her small brother was missing. But the times were hard. ” I cried into my pillow”, Olga said. ” Where was my sweet little boy? Was he, at least, risk-free”?
He was no.
By the time Olga, next 28, tracked her brother to Massachusetts, he had been removed from his father over allegations of physical abuse. Calling company after company of the Department of Children and Families, she eventually reached a girl who turned out to be Ricardo’s worker.
” Who are you”? the girl said.
” Yo soy la mamá”, Olga replied, bursting into tears.
In early January 2022, Olga, who asked that her last title been withheld to protect her children, flew to Boston. It would only be a matter of presenting data — Ricardo’s birth certificate, clips of him on her smartphone, DNA if needed — before she could take him home, she thought.
But when immigration and child happiness are involved — two controversial issues and their besieged systems — nothing is clear.
Under an federal sleek, Massachusetts formally asked Florida to review the transfer. Florida said no. Though a worker found Olga to have a clean record, a suitable house and adequate income, she denied the walk because Olga was not a legitimate U. S. citizen.
