An 8-year-old girl taken from her mother at the U.S. border spent her birthday with strangers. When a boy hit her, bruising her face, at the Texas shelter where they’re staying, her mother wasn’t there to console her.

Now Angelica Rebeca Gonzalez-Garcia is begging to be reunited with her daughter, April, and she’s turning to the federal court for help.

“She is a little girl, she hasn’t done anything wrong, why are they punishing her,” Gonzalez-Garcia sobbed.

April was forcibly taken from Gonzalez-Garcia on May 10.

Gonzalez-Garcia was seeking asylum to protect herself and her child after she suffered severe abuse and violence in Guatemala.

An emergency motion to reunite them was filed yesterday by Demissie & Church, Nixon Peabody and the ACLU of Massachusetts. The filing comes after a federal judge ordered that thousands of parents and children who were forcibly separated should be the reunited within 30 days. The emergency motion urges a more immediate reunification for Gonzalez-Garcia and her daughter to prevent further trauma, according to attorney Susan Church.

“We hope the federal district court of Massachusetts recognizes every day that goes by without these two being united adds to the trauma of this child,” Church said.

As immigration officials were taking her child away, Gonzalez-Garcia said, one asked her if they celebrate Mother’s Day in her country. When she replied, “yes,” he said, “Well, happy Mother’s Day.”

The mother and daughter were detained by immigration in Arizona on May 9.

The next day, Gonzalez-Garcia was removed from the cell.

“They told me that they were going to take my daughter a long way away from me,” she said.

They brought the families to a trailer, had them dress their children and lined them up to take them away.

“I hugged my daughter and told her that she didn’t have to cry,” she said. “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Mom, I love you with all my heart.’ ”

“They’re treating this mother as if she were a stranger to her own daughter,” Church said. “It’s a nightmare for this family and many others.”

Federal agencies named in the lawsuit, including the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, didn’t immediately comment.