Lurvin Perdomo, 34, marched through the streets of downtown Houston carrying her 8-month-old baby boy and wearing an ankle monitor.

Perdomo, a Honduran immigrant seeking asylum, joined thousands in Houston and in more than 700 cities across the U.S. on Saturday in rallies and marches for the reunification of immigrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

'WE CARE': Family separation protests flood U.S. cities

As chants of “free the children now” filled the hot, humid air around her, Perdomo squeezed her eyes shut. Tears still managed to escape as the memories bubbled up.

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The day she buried her husband, a former traffic officer and victim of a drug cartel in Honduras. The days in 2015 spent locked away in a Texas facility called “la perrera,” or the kennel. The moment she saw her then 11-year-old daughter pressing her tear-streaked face against a chainlink fence.

Mother and daughter had been separated for 72 hours as agents interrogated them individually. The girl barely speaks about that period. She doesn’t have to, Perdomo said, she understands.

“I felt like I was dying,” Perdomo said of the separation, “I can only imagine what mothers whose children were separated now are going through.”

On Wednesday, federal District Court Judge Dana Sabraw in California ruled that separated parents must be put in touch with an estimated 2,000 children within 10 days, adding that children under the age of 5 must be reunited with their parents within two weeks and all families must be reunited within a month.

Yet no clear system is in place to reunify all these families on time. And some, like Erik Antonsen, 43, worry about the damages already done.

As an emergency medicine doctor at Ben Taub Hospital, Antonsen has seen the lasting psychological effects of violence and separation in his immigrant family patients. It’s why he went out to march on Saturday.

“We’re not supposed to support a government that is actually harming families and causing psychological and mental harm to children,” he said.

The Houston march was coordinated by several local groups including Indivisible Houston, Black Lives Matter Houston, the Texas chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, and immigrant rights groups FIEL and United We Dream among others.

For Houston City Councilman Robert Gallegos, participating in the rally and march was a personal matter. As a first-generation American, he said he supports Houston’s immigrant communities and questions the policies put into place that harm the broader immigrant population.

“Individuals that claim family values — where are those family values now?” he asked.

By midday, the march had reached the downtown office of Sen. Ted Cruz, where protestors chanted “vote Ted out.”

In an interview with The Monitor, Cruz initially defended President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy that has led to the separation of immigration children from their parents illegally crossing the border. Later, on June 19, the Republican senator reversed course, introducing the Protect Kids and Parents Act which would keep immigrant families together while parents’ claims are being processed, expedite processing and review for these families’ cases, and double the number of federal immigration judges.

Many marching on Saturday called for the senator to pick a side.

Yet the broader message of the day was unity across communities, according to Sobia Siddiqui, operations coordinator for the Houston chapter of CAIR. Signs and speeches decried family separations, the so-called Muslim ban recently upheld by the Supreme Court, and other acts against minority communities.

“Everything is raining down on minorities in America right now,” she said. “If we’re divided, we fall.”

As the march wound back to the steps of City Hall, Perdomo held up a water bottle for her infant son to drink.

She checks in with immigration officials every 15 days and agents arrive at her door every Tuesday. The ankle monitor serves as yet another tracking method.

After seeing images and hearing audio recordings in the news of the separated immigrant children, Perdomo gives thanks that she and her daughter crossed in 2015. The 72 hours of separation was too much to bear then. She doesn’t want to think about what would have happened to them now.

Instead, she wants to do what she can to fight for the reunification of families.

His thirst sated, Perdomo’s baby boy giggled at a funny face she made. Then he poked her nose, and buried his face in her shoulder as they headed home.

Elizabeth Myong contributed to this report.

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